Maine

Too Much Funk at New Venue Keeps Maine Residents Awake

A new Maine concert venue hosted its first show Sunday night. It was an opening some living nearby say was a little too loud.

As Anderson .Paak’s blend of soul, funk and other genres filled the new 8,000 plus seat Maine Savings Pavilion, people in Portland and Westbrook were picking up their phones, calling city police departments and texting each other about booming bass some say rattled their walls until 11 p.m.

“We have 14 windows and we had to close all of them,” said Andrea Bradbury, a Portland resident who lives more than 1.5 miles from the pavilion.

Bradbury says she’s lived in Portland for 25 years and went to bed crying because the noise was so disturbing.

She doesn’t want the venue to shut down, but instead work to mitigate the noise.

“They need a barrier,” she said.

Others, like Phyllis Guevin, who lives roughly four miles away from concert space says the music was so loud, “it sounded like there was a live band at the end of the street.”

Guevin called police and is skeptical a solution to the sound problem can be found.

“It’s a necessity to have peace and quiet, to have entertainment is not a necessity,” she said.

Meanwhile, Alex Gray, whose company, Waterfront Concerts, organized Sunday’s show says noise data is being collected.

He said ambient noise tests were also done, but different artists have different PA systems and other variables like weather can affect concert volume.

Gray’s hope is the venue will become “a good neighbor” after tweaks are made to aspects of each show like changing PA system heights and adjusting “control volumes and mix positions.”

Waterfront Concerts had a similar experience when launching the Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion in Bangor, when, according to Gray, his company dealt with “hundreds of noise complaints.”

He’s asking anyone who felt the noise was too loud to call or e-mail Waterfront Concerts so the complaints can be analyzed and improvements made.

The residents most affected by the noise hope those changes are made immediately since the Maine Savings Pavilion has more than a dozen shows on its schedule for Summer 2019.

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