Last week, the Cumberland County Civic Center board of trustees approved a $28 million renovation plan for the arena, which broke ground in 1975 and hosted its first act in March 1977.
Among other improvements, the plan would renovate the locker rooms, green rooms and performer spaces, and expand the loading dock staging areas and production spaces. It calls for improved restrooms and expanded and upgraded concession operations, and would add premium seating in the form of small luxury boxes and a section with larger “club seats.”
The trustees now have to sell the plan, as a bond referendum to pay for the renovations will likely go before voters next November. In doing so, officials must be clear as to why they believe the plan is in the best interests of the entire county, and they must be prepared to show in concrete terms how the civic center benefits residents and businesses outside of Portland.
In choosing the $28 million option, and discarding quickly a $115 million plan by Westbrook developer Jason Snyder to build a new arena, the trustees showed a willingness to be both reasonable and realistic with their plans for the future of the civic center.
While some of the biting comments made about Snyder by trustees last week should have been tempered so as not to discourage developers from approaching the county in the future, rejecting Snyder’s plan was the right decision. It would have relied almost solely on public funding, and would have turned the civic center into a convention hall of dubious value.
The trustees also wisely rejected two other renovation options, a less extensive, roughly $25 million plan without premium seating that a study produced by a civic center task force found would not have added sufficient revenue, and a roughly $33 million option that would have added seats but no discernable value, according to the study.
Now, officials have to demonstrate the same wisdom in convincing residents in places like Windham, Raymond, Scarborough and Westbrook that it is the right plan at the right time for the right price.
The plan adopted by the trustees looks at first glance to be a cost-effective way to make much-needed improvements to the civic center, which the study said would lose 10 annual events and around $460,000 in revenue by 2016 if nothing is done.
“Although the Portland market and the management of the Civic Center are strong, the physical deficiencies of the facility are increasingly too great to overcome,” the report read.
The building of the civic center was a divisive issue back in 1975, and its purported benefit to the county has been the subject of much debate in outlying towns ever since.
As officials look ahead to the civic center’s next 15-20 years with this new proposal, it seems like the perfect time to try to put that debate to rest.
Ben Bragdon is the managing editor of Current Publishing.
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