Panel discusses building downtown arena

BANGOR – When the city gets ready to replace the aging Bangor Auditorium and Civic Center, chances are good that the complex won’t be built at Bass Park.

During a meeting on Tuesday, members of the City Council’s business and economic development committee voted to send to the full council a resolve recommending that the city give serious thought to moving the operation downtown. The exact location, however, has yet to be determined.

While discussing the matter, councilors cited several pluses for a downtown site, chief among them the thousands of people it could bring to that part of the city, namely nights and weekends when it is otherwise quiet.

Another factor was the potential impact that plans for proposed improvements to the city’s harness racing facility might have on Bass Park. Late last year, representatives of Capital Seven LLC, the company that now operates Bangor Raceway, met with city officials to discuss plans to develop a $30 million entertainment and gaming complex at Bass Park. City councilors are slated to consider granting Capital Seven tentative developer status on Dec. 27.

Preliminary designs for the arena facility, which are developed by HOK Associates, a Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm, call for the construction of a three-level, 220,000-square-foot facility comprising a 7,500-seat arena and adjacent convention center.

As proposed, the state-of-the-art combined arena and convention center would provide more than triple the space available at Bass Park, according to Jonathan Daniels, the city’s business and economic development director.

“If we are going to attract the type of entertainment and if we are going to attract a minor league sports franchise, this is the quality that we’ll need,” Daniels said before Tuesday’s meeting.

The release of the HOK draft report was part of a $100,000 study of a new auditorium and civic center.

Representatives of the Minneapolis, Minn.-based Convention Sports & Leisure International presented a market study last October.

The CS&L analysis concluded that the city could support an arena of up to 7,500 seats, a 25 percent increase from the existing facility at Bass Park.

It projected that a new complex would pump between $21 million and $28 million into the local economy each year. Market research also suggested that the complex would operate at a loss of between $68,000 and $279,000 depending on how much the facility is used.

While HOK estimated the total cost at more than $40 million, city officials said Tuesday the actual price likely will be lowered once they’ve had a chance to scour more detailed cost breakdowns for savings.

Securing funding for the project is a critical next step, HOK notes in its report.

For more than 10 years, councilors and city officials have talked about the needs of the nearly 50-year-old auditorium, its aging structure, and its inadequacies in serving today’s market for conferences, trade shows and concerts.

During that time, councilors repeatedly have voted to put what money the city could afford into fix-ups – new bathrooms and a food court for the auditorium, a new decor for the civic center.

In recent years, however, the discussions have taken on more urgency.

The existing complex is reaching the end of its useful life, and city officials now are grappling with deciding what will replace it – and how that will be funded.

To that end, the group voted to send to the full council a second resolve, this one directing the city to explore public-private funding partnerships, to get detailed information on how the complex might be built in phases and to seek ways to reduce project costs.