Bangor seeks to keep EM A tourney Auditorium, city officials face uphill challenge

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Work is being done behind the scenes by Bangor Auditorium and city officials on a proposal to submit to the Maine Principals’ Association in an effort to keep the Eastern Maine Class A basketball tournament from being moved to the Augusta Civic Center beginning in 2006.

But whether the city can overcome the challenges rooted in the changing demographics of northern and eastern Maine during the last decade is uncertain.

“Everyone understands the population shift,” said Mike Dyer, executive director of Bangor’s Bass Park complex that includes the Bangor Auditorium.

The MPA is considering a number of changes in its basketball playoff format: moving the Eastern A tournament from Bangor to Augusta; moving the Western B tournament from Augusta to Portland; and possibly shifting the Class A regional tournaments from early March to February vacation week, when the Classes B, C, and D tournaments already are held.

An MPA ad hoc committee made up of members of that organization’s four basketball subcommittees recently recommended those changes after conducting four informational meetings around the state in early May and surveying its 152 member schools late last month.

The MPA received 113 survey responses, with 90 in support of moving the Eastern A tournament to Augusta.

The Augusta location is more centrally located for the current makeup of Eastern Maine Class A, and will be more so by 2006 when John Bapst of Bangor moves from Class A to Class B.

The ad hoc committee’s three recommendations are expected to be considered by the MPA’s full basketball committee in September, with any changes requiring the support of the full MPA membership at its fall conference in November.

Of the 21 Eastern Maine Class A basketball schools in 2004, just six – Bangor, Brewer, John Bapst, Hampden Academy, Old Town, and Nokomis of Newport – are located closer to Bangor than to Augusta.

Teams from nine schools – Cony of Augusta, Gardiner, Mount Ararat of Topsham, Morse of Bath, Brunswick, Leavitt of Turner Center, Edward Little of Auburn, Lewiston, and Oxford Hills of South Paris – must travel right past the Augusta Civic Center on Interstate 95 on their way to Bangor, with more than 70 miles still to travel before reaching their current tournament destination.

Those nine schools are among 15 Eastern A members of the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference which made an initial written request to the MPA for the tournament to be moved from Bangor to Augusta in the winter of 2002-2003.

The effect of the southward shift of Maine’s population and the shrinking of the school-age population in northern and eastern Maine on the Eastern A tournament came into full focus this March. Just 13,010 fans attended the 2004 regional tournament, a 32 percent drop from the 19,564 who attended in 2003. A major reason for that drop was that just three Greater Bangor teams, the Bangor boys and girls and Hampden Academy girls, reached the quarterfinals, and only the Bangor boys advanced past the semifinals.

The reason the changes are being considered now is that the MPA is negotiating with its three basketball tournament venues – Bangor, Augusta, and the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland – on new five-year contracts. The current five-year deals expire at the end of the 2005 tournaments.

“[Executive director] Dick Durost and the MPA people have kept us up to date on this for the last 10 to 12 months,” Dyer said. “They’ve been very up-front about what is going on and what they’re up against.”

Durost recently met with Dyer, Bangor city manager Ed Barrett, and Mayor Dan Tremble to discuss results of the MPA survey and to keep city officials updated on the issue.

That came shortly after Dyer and the business and economic committee of the Bangor City Council discussed the issue during a meeting that also included input from Bangor High basketball coaches Roger Reed and Tom Tennett.

Based on those meetings, Dyer said city officials will “see if we can come up with a package that is reasonable” to present to the MPA before the basketball committee meets in September. Any proposal is unlikely to include significant financial incentives, he said.

“Certainly we understand the economics of it in terms of the cost schools carry forth for travel, and the fact the MPA uses the basketball tournament in great part to fund the other 31 activities it sponsors during the school year,” Dyer said.

While the Eastern Maine high school basketball tournaments help support such other MPA-sanctioned activities as music and drama competitions, public speaking contests and science fairs, they also have been an economic boon to Greater Bangor.

“The basketball tournaments are a sizeable source of instate tourism for Bangor,” said Candace Guerrette, executive director of the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce. “A lot of times it’s not just people coming to the games, but meals and lodging and shopping.”

That is particularly true when the Classes B, C, and D tournament comes to town during the third week of February. With schools on vacation, fans from Fort Kent to Readfield and from Calais to Greenville converge on Bangor, often staying for several days while their teams compete for regional glory.

The Eastern A tourney, while involving schools from larger communities, is held primarily on weekends in early March.

“Definitely the impact of the A tournament on the hospitality industry isn’t the same as the B, C, and D tournament during vacation week,” Dyer said.

As evidence of that sentiment, the Greater Bangor Convention & Visitors Bureau recently surveyed local businesses to assess the potential impact of the city losing the Eastern A tournament to Augusta.

But of the 170 members surveyed, only 13 responded, despite the CVB sending out the survey twice and following that up with phone calls and e-mails in an effort to solicit a greater response.

“It tells me that it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to most of them,” said CVB executive director Donna Fichtner of the survey response. “To those who responded it matters a lot, but for others it doesn’t seem to matter much.”

Those 13 that did respond, including the Bangor Mall, Best Inn, Miller’s Restaurant, and the Sea Dog restaurant, estimated a collective loss of approximately $220,000 in annual revenue if the tournament is moved, Fichtner said.

“It’s very discouraging,” she said. “If it was the regular [B, C, and D] tournament they’d be up in arms, but with Class A it doesn’t seem like it matters.”

Dyer remains hopeful Class A basketball will continue to create postseason magic at the Bangor Auditorium beyond next year – such as Mike Thurston’s halfcourt shot that lifted Caribou past Westbrook in the 1969 state final or Joe Campbell redirecting an airball through the hoop at the buzzer to propel Bangor past Deering of Portland in the 2001 title game.

But he’s also preparing for the possibility that next year’s Eastern A tournament may be Bangor’s last.

“Obviously, we don’t want to lose any event dates here,” Dyer said. “Our first option would be to keep the Eastern A tournament in Bangor, but if that’s out of our hands we’ve got to work on a Plan B.

“It’s not like the auditorium will just go dark for the first two weeks of March.”