BANGOR – The National Folk Festival is being billed as the biggest party this city has ever thrown.

Musical acts are booked. Food and souvenirs are ordered. Roads are newly paved. Streetlights are painted. And flowers fill planters throughout the downtown.

The waterfront area, once considered a blemish abutting the Penobscot River, is reborn with newly grown grass covering areas where abandoned buildings, now demolished, once stood.

The free event is being heavily promoted not just in Maine but throughout the country. It’s Bangor’s time to shine, and according to festival organizers, it’s ready.

Only one question remains, though – how many people will actually attend? Estimates of 60,000 people filling the waterfront area and spilling into downtown boggle the minds of some business people.

One area businessman said Bangor is anxious to experience what happens when a festival of this magnitude is held here. Tom Cavanaugh, co-owner of Best Bib and Tucker clothiers, called the days leading up to the start “a period of the great unknown.”

“The fun part is nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen,” added Cynthia Cavanaugh, also co-owner of the upscale clothing store located a couple of blocks from the waterfront.

Rick Vigue, owner of Rebecca’s gift shop, said if Bangor is saturated with the numbers of people the festival organizers are saying will attend, “it’s going to be a mob scene.

“I’m planning on being bombarded,” he added. “I hope I’m not disappointed.”

Every day, Bangor’s population base of under 33,000 people swells to 100,000 people as shoppers fill stores and businesses throughout the area, said Susan Pierce, folk festival director.

“Even though Bangor is used to the numbers, it’s not used to the concentration in one area at one time,” she said.

How Bangor has prepared for the National Folk Festival has impressed organizers of some of Maine’s other bigger festivals. And their advice to the city of Bangor is: “Sit back, relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor.”

“I can understand the people in Bangor being nervous,” said Paul Benjamin, one of the organizers of the North Atlantic Blues Festival in Rockland. “But they don’t need to be. If you’re putting on a good, professional product, people will come. And Bangor’s doing that.”

What will make the festival successful, he said, is for organizers not to put emphasis on the numbers – the number of people attending or the amount of money that’s going to be spent in the area.

“You can’t force people to go,” Benjamin said. “People are going to go if they want to go. And that’s the hardest thing [for organizers] to let go of.”

In Rockland, the Maine Lobster Festival each year brings in up to $40 million in sales. And the blues festival generates millions because the people who attend typically have plenty of disposable income.

Jamie Isaacson, another organizer of the blues festival, said the first year’s impact of a festival on a town is speculative, especially with a free event. Organizers can’t judge attendance at the National Folk Festival because tickets aren’t sold for it.

In 1994, the blues festival’s first year in Rockland, 1,500 people attended, Isaacson said. This year, ticket sales topped 13,000. That’s more than a third of the attendance Bangor expects this weekend, he said, but the financial impact on Rockland remains great each year.

“Downtown businesses in Rockland really like the blues festival because it brings in lots and lots of money,” Isaacson said.

The actual economic impact of the National Folk Festival and the Senior Little League World Series, which ended Saturday, won’t be known until retail sales figures are turned in to the state. Those will be due by the end of September, and sales numbers for August will be available from Maine Revenue Services by the middle of October.

Director Pierce said Bangor expects to gain $1 million a day in new sales. One of the last cities to host the festival, East Lansing, Mich., saw gains of $6 million a weekend.

What’s going to help businesses in Bangor and surrounding areas is the timing of festival events – starting at 5:30 p.m. Friday and noon on Saturday and Sunday, Pierce said. Festival-goers will have their mornings to travel to the Bangor Mall, downtown, the coast or other locations before the shows start.

“The economic impact is going to be in the larger area than Bangor proper,” she said.

Because National Folk Festival audiences each year are similar to those that attend blues festivals, “That would automatically tell you that you’ve got a good, calm group,” said Ed Kolmosky, organizer of the Maine Lobster Festival and the Union Wild Blueberry Festival. “If I were doing one, that’s the kind of group I would want to attract, one that will do nothing but bring dollars to the community.”

Other than nerves, Bangor is ready for the party, said City Manager Ed Barrett.

“I will tell you we’re trying to put in some extra time cleaning up the city,” he said.

That’s good, said Vigue, who plans to wash the outside of his store.

“Of course we’re going to make things spiffy,” he said. “We’re having company for the weekend. We’re going to clean the house up.”