Bangor Auditorium aging fast

By the time the Eastern Maine High School Basketball Tournament wraps up in less than two weeks, more than 70,000 Mainers will have returned to their hometowns with joyful memories that will last a lifetime.

They’ll recall the raucous good times and the spirited, youthful competition that this much-anticipated escape from the winter doldrums provides in such abundance every year. Like the generations of fans and players that preceded them, they’ll understand why the Bangor Auditorium has come to be regarded over the decades as the venerable shrine of Maine basketball, the winged-roof mecca that stands as a monument to the durability of tradition.

And if all goes well between now and the end of the tournament, Bass Park Director Mike Dyer and his crew will be able to breathe a big sigh of relief that the old barn, built in 1954, managed to honor its vaunted reputation for one more year.

Dyer will be grateful for this recent spell of cold and dry weather, for example, remembering vividly the tournament two years ago and others before that when cycles of freezing and thawing sent water from the defective roof spilling down onto the playing floor, disrupting the games. He’ll be especially thankful, too, if the old heating system holds up, and the cranky drains in the restrooms don’t back up as they have before.

In this aging, second-rate facility in which just about anything can go wrong, Dyer will be extremely happy if nothing does.

“This facility has had it,” Dyer said Monday morning as the crowds roared during the Class D quarterfinal games, “from the layout of the locker rooms to the problems with the roof to the inadequate number of toilets. It’s on its last legs, and we can keep it going on its last legs – as long as it’s not forever.”

Dyer gives the creaky old auditorium about five years, tops. In that time, he’ll do what he has been doing since he arrived in 1988 to run the Bass Park complex, which is to wring every available dime from his $1.5 million operating budget to make Band-Aid repairs to problems at the outdated building that will only get worse.

Every winter and fall, workers make expensive repairs to the roof. Before the start of this year’s tournament, a plumbing contractor sent cameras through all of the building’s drains to check for potential problems in the vast system that could cause flooding.

Congestion is inevitable in the narrow entryway that serves as the auditorium’s sole ticket area, there are not nearly enough restrooms to go around, and the narrow stairwells don’t lend themselves to an orderly emergency evacuation.

A few years ago, games had to be postponed for about two hours and part of the basketball floor had to be lifted so a city bucket truck could come in and hang tarps to catch leaks from the roof.

“These things are always on your mind at this time of the year,” Dyer said. “We do the best we can and then we hold our breath. But at some point, there will be a major malfunction that will test the city’s ability to keep pouring money into the place.”

Dyer’s greatest frustration in recent years has been the persistent unwillingness of the Legislature to recognize the economic and cultural benefits that a new, top-notch facility in Bangor would provide to the large region it would serve. He said lawmakers have been shortsighted in repeatedly rejecting the city’s request for a local option sales tax – a penny on every dollar spent in the city, or a mere 50 cents added to a hotel bill – that could raise the money for a regional arena without placing the burden entirely on the backs of Bangor taxpayers.

And while the revenue from slot machines at the Bangor horse track could significantly improve the city’s ability to build a new arena some day, Dyer said, there is no guarantee that the amount of gaming income would be able to live up to projections.

“The key is to convince the Legislature that this auditorium is not a Bangor issue, it’s a state issue,” Dyer said. “The City Council did a good job of bringing the issue to the forefront in the last two or three years, but right now we’re no closer to having a new building than we were five years ago. We may not be at the crisis point now, but we could be tomorrow. And then, when it’s too late, everyone in the region would understand exactly what they’ll be missing.”