<\/p>\n
PORTLAND \u2014 The Portland City Council narrowly passed a measure to enact a 750-foot buffer between large music venues on Monday.<\/p>\n
Live Nation New England\u00a0proposed a 3,300-seat music venue across the street from Merrill Auditorium.\u00a0Supporters of the buffer referenced a\u00a0New York federal court jury\u00a0decision two weeks ago\u00a0that found\u00a0Live Nation and Ticketmaster operate together as\u00a0a monopoly.<\/p>\n
The council first enacted a moratorium on theater and performance halls with\u00a0a capacity exceeding than 2,000 people in August of last year, then extended it. Between August and now, the council brought forth the buffer measure, which\u00a0could\u00a0now\u00a0prevent the\u00a0venue\u2019s\u00a0development.<\/p>\n
The council\u00a0passed it\u00a05-4, with councilors April Fournier, Benjamin Grant,\u00a0Pious Ali, Wesley\u00a0Pelletier\u00a0and Anna Bullett voting in favor. Councilors Kate Sykes, Sarah Michniewicz,\u00a0Regina\u00a0Phillips\u00a0and Mayor Mark Dion voted against the measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Opponents of the buffer claimed it was unfair to change the zoning rules after the development was cleared by the planning board. In fact, Planning Board\u00a0Chair Joe Zamboni\u00a0told councilors that the board\u00a0did not think the buffer\u00a0fit\u00a0within Portland\u2019s comprehensive plan.<\/p>\n
And, restauranteurs downtown said the venue would bring more foot traffic, especially in the off-season when\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0in desperate need of business. Tom Barr,\u00a0the\u00a0owner\u00a0and operator of two downtown restaurants \u2014\u00a0Taco\u00a0Escobarr\u00a0and Lazzari\u00a0\u2014\u00a0told councilors\u00a0a large music venue could help bring people into town, and therefore into\u00a0restaurants\u00a0during the cold months.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the off months for restaurants, the difference of something happening in town and something not happening in town is not a matter of\u00a0a percentage,\u201d Barr said.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0business by a factor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Supporters of the buffer said a large, corporate venue would endanger the smaller, local venues in town.\u00a0And,\u00a0many supporters worried that having two large music venues right next to each other would generate more traffic for an already crowded road outside City Hall.\u00a0Forty people spoke in favor of the buffer on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Emilia Dahlin, a Portland musician, told councilors that the\u00a0high ticket\u00a0prices that Live Nation charges for its events\u00a0are not affordable to many people in Portland. She argued that preventing Live Nation from doing business in the city is beneficial to those who attend live music events.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you know that the entity you are dealing with has just been found guilty in anti-trust laws by a federal jury, that\u2019s\u00a0not the kind of business that we want to do here in Portland,\u201d Dahlin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source spectrumlocalnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PORTLAND \u2014 The Portland City Council narrowly passed a measure to enact a 750-foot buffer between large music venues on Monday. Live Nation New England\u00a0proposed a 3,300-seat music venue across the street from Merrill Auditorium.\u00a0Supporters of the buffer referenced a\u00a0New York federal court jury\u00a0decision two weeks ago\u00a0that found\u00a0Live Nation and Ticketmaster operate together as\u00a0a monopoly. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2394490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[445461,356691,445459,21796,467259,377987,445462,445460],"class_list":["post-2394489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-app-around-maine","tag-app-in-the-community","tag-around-maine-more-maine-news","tag-business","tag-jules-walkup","tag-maine","tag-publish-to-facebook-me","tag-publish-to-x-threads-me"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Portland-enacts-buffer-on-music-venues.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2394489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2394491,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394489\/revisions\/2394491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2394490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2394489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2394489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2394489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}