Phish returning to Loring in August

LIMESTONE – The Loring Commerce Centre will again host the band Phish and their entourage of 60,000 or more fans in August.

While specific dates and many details have yet to be worked out, the Loring Development Authority on Friday morning unanimously agreed to a return concert by the Vermont musicians who were at Loring in 1997 and 1998.

The proposal agreed to Friday was submitted by Great Northeast Productions, the Massachusetts company that developed the two other concerts that Phish held in northern Maine.

Brian Hamel, president of the LCC and LDA, said the weekend concert will not coincide with the 65th National Folk Festival that will be held Aug. 22-24 at Bangor.

Phish had only two more concerts after their 1998 appearance at Loring. After a two-year hiatus following a millennium concert, Phish performed to a sellout crowd on Dec. 31, 2002, at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Phish made a decision to return to Loring on March 19.

“This concert will be more difficult for us because we have had considerable development since their last concert here in 1998,” Hamel said Friday afternoon. “We now have aviation tenants, and whatever is done has to work for them.

“All the money the LDA makes with the concert will be used to help fund infrastructure improvements in the aviation sector,” Hamel continued. “We will make at least as much or better with the concert than we did in 1998.

“This definitely is a go,” he said.

In 1998, the LDA received $95,000 as its share of ticket sales, or $1.50 per ticket sold. About 60,000 to 65,000 tickets were sold for the 1998 appearance.

The Loring appearance is one of eight Phish concerts scheduled between now and August, according to the group’s Web site. Other concerts are in California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio.

Phish’s two previous concerts at Loring, The Great Went in 1997 and Lemonwheel in 1998, each brought the biggest crowds ever to any activity held in northern Maine.

Fans attending the concerts arrive Thursday and Friday. They are allowed onto the site Friday and leave Monday. Several concerts are held at the venue Saturday and Sunday.

Fans camp out during the concerts, using the 1,600 acres of the aviation complex. Vehicles usually are parked on the tarmac of the aviation facility, and people camp out on grassy areas along the runways.

Hamel said the LDA has been in discussion with Great Northeast Productions since last fall. The LDA already has coordinated with state officials and the Maine State Police on some of the preliminary details.

The LDA estimates that the previous Phish concerts each pumped $25 million into the Maine economy.

An emergency meeting of the LDA was called for Friday. Hamel said a large number of details that need to be worked out required a decision by the LDA before its regularly scheduled meeting.

The project was the only item on the 9 a.m. meeting agenda.

The aviation tenants at the LCC include the Telford/Volvo Group, which brings planes to Loring for dismantling and overhaul. Their facility has a warehouse for used airplane parts. The group has several planes on site.