The Portland City Council on Monday night approved a temporary moratorium on new music venue developments, effectively pausing a controversial project from a local developer and concert promotion giant Live Nation.
The project calls for building a music hall with a capacity for 3,300 people on Myrtle Street across from the Merrill Auditorium.
City councilors heard more than three-and-a-half hours of public comment on the issue Monday night, and debated the topic for nearly two more hours.
City Councilor April Fournier said the moratorium will give the city time to study the impact of the new venue on Portland’s creative economy, traffic and parking.
“If you want to do business with the city of Portland, I would hope that you have some flexibility and patience, as we work through some of these unknowns [and] as we contemplate and listen to this huge outpouring from our community that says hey, we’re concerned,” she said.
Dozens of local musicians and venue operators said the city should take more time to evaluate whether it should bring Live Nation, which is the subject of an anti-trust lawsuit and investigation from the U.S. Justice Department, into Portland.
But Portland Mayor Mark Dion, who was one of three city councilors who voted against the moratorium, argued that the business shouldn’t matter.
“If they satisfy the conditions that are expressed in the current code, then by right, they should be able to move forward,” Dion said, adding that he believed Live Nation had met municipal planning requirements.
To make matters more complicated, the moratorium did not receive the votes needed to pass as an emergency, and so the measure will not go into effect until Sept. 10.
That means the Portland Planning Board, which was scheduled to consider and potentially vote on the music venue project Tuesday night, could technically still approve the project. In that case, the project would be paused starting Sept. 10 once the moratorium goes into effect.
The moratorium will run through March 9, though city councilors can vote to lift it sooner.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
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