Neighbors fear park renovation may attract unwanted activities

Neighbors of Bangor’s Second Street Park say they are pleased with recent improvements but question whether the work will curtail the nightly assemblies of rowdy teen-agers.

When all is said and done, the city will have a park with $90,000 worth of renovations — new landscaping, new equipment and new fences.

But a couple of people who watched city crews work Thursday said, “The music starts between 9:30 and 10 just about every night. We need more (police) cruisers down here. It’s not going to get a whole lot better just because they put a playground in.”

The neighbors who did not wish to be identified, fearing retaliation from the youth who congregate every evening, conceded that park improvements have decreased the amount of rowdyism, but they also said that there was still room for a vast amount of improvement.

“This used to be a hangout for druggies and everything else. When we get done, this’ll be one of the better parks in the city,” Roland Perry, city forester, said Thursday morning as he watched a crew with a backhoe dig holes to plant three trees along one side of the playground.

Down the swale a couple more public works crews moved and graded fill. By the end of the job about 5,000 cubic yards of fill will have been trucked from the huge pile at the Fifth Street Middle School where contractors worked all summer on an expansion and renovation project.

“The fill is being donated; the city is hauling it,” said Rodney McKay, director of community development. McKay oversees the Community Development Block Grant money, the federal funding program being used to pay for the work at the park.

The money paid for a new playground with slides and swings, ramps and rings. The park improvements also include new walkways, a chain-link fence along the back, a cedar split-rail fence along Second Street, more lighting and benches.

And the posts will be sunk to prevent vehicles from crossing the new lawns of the park and to keep people from driving in, parking and cranking thier stereos.

Neighbors felt that the basketball court that used to be in the park was responsible for much of the late-night noise and the plan to rebuild it was deleted from the drawings.

“If the basketball court does go back in it’ll be down closer to the Gas Works Parking Lot,” said Dale Theriault, director of parks and recreation. “That way, we would keep it away from the neighborhood, there were so many complaints before about the older kids using it at night.”

In a related effort to tether the teen-agers, a couple of weeks ago police barricaded the the two entrances to the Gas Works Parking Lot, which had been a hot spot for mobile teen-agers. That action earned the officers the gratitude of neighbors.

In a letter to City Manager Edward A. Barrett, signed by 16 people, they said, “Now that this first action has been taken … we ask that the city administration follow through with definite action to permanently curb the noise, rowdy behavior and all other inappropriate and/or illegal activities that have occurred nightly in our neighborhood for the past several months.”

Officers later removed the barricades and at the same time, the City Council has referred to committee an ordinance that would empower authorities to close parking lots after hours.

Plans for the park include a streetlight at that end near the parking lot, which, officials say should help.

The improvements at Second Street are just part of a $200,000 package, budgted this year by the city with CDBG funds. McKay said that the money will used to replace playground equipment in the Fifth Street, Coe, Downeast, Williams and Broadway parks. Additionally, he said that next year, Broadway Park will undergo a face lift.