Friends of Portland Music Hall are small business owners, community members and music enthusiasts who support downtown development that expands the live music scene in Portland.

As a major restaurant owner in Portland for 33 years, and being located so close to the Cross Insurance Arena and Merrill Auditorium in distance, I would seek the Planning Board’s approval of the proposed Portland Music Hall.

After losing my store this year, and being one of 33 local food spots to close in the past year, I really think another entertainment venue is needed. It would attract the bigger shows and bring a lot of people to Portland to eat, drink and to stay at our great local hotels.

If Portland suffers from many visitor shortcomings, like expensive parking and not enough public restrooms, let’s at least give our local food shops more traffic so we may survive down the road.

I strongly support the Portland Music Hall. Howard and Todd Goldenfarb have a long history of doing quality developments and restorations. In Fact Howard helped renovate many of the historic building in the Old Port and did a first class job on everyone of those buildings.

This will be an amazing venue for mid size acts and events! Portland has become a destination for Foodies and Beer lovers and this will only add additional options to come and visit and enjoy our City.

The moratorium is a very bad idea! The local tax revenue alone is enough to fast track this project.

Portland should not lose this opportunity for more jobs and new attractions to bring additional life to Maine and Portland.

My company Shipyard Brewing Company has been in Portland for over 30 years and over the last few years we have seen a higher than normal failure rate of restaurants. This will help bring more customers to the City and help keep new and existing venues open .

Hopefully you will encourage the planning board to approve this project and let Portland benefit by this major investment in our City.

As a local business, I urge you to move forward with a large music venue in Southern Maine.

No moratorium please!

Keep Mainers local and let travelers come to Maine to enjoy music!

I am writing to express my enthusiastic support for the proposed Portland Music Hall at 244 Cumberland Avenue. As the Managing Director of the Ogunquit Playhouse in Southern Maine, I have seen firsthand how high-quality cultural venues can transform communities, fuel economic growth, and elevate a region’s reputation as a destination for the arts.

The Portland Music Hall is not just a new performance venue — it is a vital piece of infrastructure that will redefine downtown Portland, activating a long-disused building and delivering year-round cultural and economic benefits. This venue will attract musical acts that have historically bypassed our region, expanding access for Maine residents and drawing new audiences to the state.

The projected impact is extraordinary: more than 125 events annually and an estimated $44.2 million in economic activity each year, including $25.5 million from out-of-town visitors. These numbers are more than statistics—they represent meals in local restaurants, overnight stays in our hotels, and sustained momentum for small businesses across Portland.

As someone deeply invested in Maine’s cultural identity, I believe this project helps realize a broader vision of Maine as a year-round destination for exceptional live performance. It complements the work being done by theaters and arts organizations across the state and strengthens Maine’s competitive standing within the national arts and entertainment landscape. The Portland Music Hall is being developed with community and sustainability in mind and with a deep respect for Portland’s architectural and civic integrity. It honors the character of the city while pushing its cultural possibilities forward.

I encourage you to support this project and help bring to life a venue that will inspire, employ, and energize our community for generations to come.

I write in support of the Portland Music Hall, the new venue proposed for Portland.

Having seen over the past decades Portland grow into a vibrant city, complete with a thriving scene and an exciting restaurant destination, I believe the prospect of a proper venue for performances would further – and greatly – enhance the city’s appeal to both Maine residents and out-of-state tourism.

I hope that you will enable this project to see the light of day.

I am writing to express my deep concern over the potential moratorium being considered in response to Live Nation’s proposal to build a new performing arts venue in downtown Portland. Such a moratorium would be both a direct contradiction of the city’s established planning and zoning policies and a damaging signal to businesses and investors considering Portland as a place to grow.

For more than seven years, Portland engaged in a thorough, community-driven process to update its Comprehensive Plan. This effort was followed by a full rewrite of the city’s land use and zoning codes to ensure they aligned with our city’s goals. The outcome of this long, deliberative process clearly designated the area in question as appropriate for the type of entertainment venue Live Nation is proposing.

A moratorium at this stage would completely undermine the integrity of our land use planning process. If businesses cannot trust that Portland’s zoning and comprehensive planning documents will be respected, why would they invest here? Land use regulations exist to provide predictability—both for residents and for those looking to bring economic development, jobs, and vibrancy to our community. Changing the rules arbitrarily after years of careful planning erodes public trust and creates an unpredictable investment climate.

Portland is at a critical moment in its economic recovery. We should be actively welcoming opportunities to bring life, jobs, and revenue into downtown, not discouraging them. Live Nation’s proposed venue represents a major private investment in our city, one that aligns with our own long-term vision. Instituting a moratorium now sends a message that Portland is not a reliable partner for business growth, making it even harder to attract future investment.

I urge you to consider the long-term negative consequences of a moratorium. Portland must be a city that stands by its planning process and encourages responsible development. A moratorium in this case does the opposite—it stifles economic progress, damages the city’s credibility, and pushes businesses elsewhere.

Please reject any efforts to impose a moratorium and instead work to ensure that our city remains a place where businesses can confidently invest in the future.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

I’m writing to express unequivocal support for the new music venue development proposed for Portland—and to urge you to reject the proposed 180-day retroactive moratorium that unfairly targets this project.

This is exactly the kind of investment Portland should be encouraging, not obstructing. The economic and cultural impact of this project is clear, measurable, and overwhelmingly positive. According to the independent impact study and project deck, this development will create 250 permanent jobs, bring year-round cultural programming to the city, and require no public funding. It’s hard to imagine a more aligned opportunity with Portland’s stated goals of job creation, economic vitality, and cultural Enrichment.

Portland—and Maine more broadly—is facing serious headwinds: population stagnation, housing shortages, and an aging workforce. If the City sends a message that it punishes private sector investment with retroactive regulation, it will chill future development and accelerate decline. A retroactive moratorium doesn’t just delay progress—it actively tells job creators, artists, and entrepreneurs that Portland is closed for business.

This isn’t just about a venue. It’s about whether Portland wants to grow—and whether we want to shape the future or retreat from it, and cede opportunity to other cities and states. Growth done right benefits everyone: more jobs, more tax revenue, more reasons for young people to stay. The Council should be welcoming projects like this with open arms, not blocking them.

Please vote no on the moratorium and support a vision of Portland that is bold, forward-looking, and open to the creative economy we all want to see thrive.

Hi, I am writing to ask you to consider the implications of passing a retroactive moratorium that undermines the ReCode, an enormous process that required a consensus and considerable work – though I don’t need to tell you.

This is a grab to get something in an unfair way. ReCode was fair. This is capricious. I am not sure that I am in favor of the proposal that you’re trying to undermine but I am absolutely against this kind of manoeuvre.

I believe this kind of bureaucratic over-reach is how someone like Trump got the white house a second time because it pisses people off so much they want to blow up the establishment.

Fair is fair. Just cut it out!

I am writing to provide my 100% support for the new music venue. It will be a great addition to an unattractive and underused corner of the City.

My bigger concern is the proposed 180-day retroactive moratorium. The word “retroactive” is particularly concerning.

To me it seems inherently unfair to stop a project once it has been approved. It creates a negative image of Portland giving the perception the City is hostile to business.

A retroactive moratorium on development was tried by the City in the 1980’s with disastrous effects.

I hope the City does not let history repeat itself.

My name is Jasmin Moulton, and I am a longtime Portland resident residing at 395 Danforth Street. I own and operate a local, boutique real estate company providing sales, leasing, and real estate consulting services to our community.

I am writing this letter in strong support of the Live Nation Concert and Event Venue to be located at 244 Cumberland Avenue in Portland. I strongly support this project for the following reasons:

1.  To Support Our Hospitality & Tourism Industry: This venue would help support Portland’s most important industries of tourism and hospitality by helping to provide year round patrons for our beloved restaurants, bars, shops, and galleries especially in the slower winter months. We all want our local businesses to be successful throughout the year and to thrive even in the slower season.
2. To Provide Jobs to Locals: This venue will create approximately 250 good paying jobs for local residents.
3. To Provide Opportunity for Local Talent: This venue will provide opportunity for local musicians, artists, and other talent to network, open shows, and/or to perform alongside established talent brought in by Live Nation. Thus, giving our local talent the invaluable opportunity to enhance their careers.
4. To Provide Tax Revenue for the City: This venue will add a large amount of tax revenue to
   support desperately needed city services.

As a local Portlander, I understand the concerns about parking and congestion on the Portland
peninsula. However, since the Covid pandemic, parking garage and lot occupancy has declined
dramatically as a result of less demand due to remote and hybrid work. Thus, parking is abundantly available especially on nights and weeks, and the city can benefit from this parking revenue from city owned garages (like Elm Street). I am including a few examples below which are all within a five minute walk of the proposed venue location:

1. Top of the Old Port
2. Elm Street Parking Garage
3. Portland Public Market Garage
4. One City Center Garage
5. Cumberland County Parking Garage
6. Temple Street Parking Garage

Lastly, I believe the concept of a retroactive moratorium sends the wrong message to the development and business community about Portland’s openness to new business ventures at a time when we desperately need economic growth. I hope you will consider these points favorably in making your decision. Thank you for your time and consideration.

I am writing to encourage support for the proposed Portland Music Hall.

We own buildings along Congress street where small business continues to struggle daily.

I believe the Music Hall will help support those businesses by bringing into town folks who do not reside in Portland. It is our expectation that those coming to see a concert will eat at establishments along the corridor thus supporting the struggling local economy.

In addition, we are all well aware of the escalating city Property taxes that increase every year. This project is a shot in the arm for the tax base.

Look around the streets of Portland. All we will see are empty storefronts, especially onCongress Street. We’d better wake up or we are going lose a great city. So, let’s get on board with the Portland Music Hall to be run by Live Nation.

One thing about Live Nation is it never fails. I personally lost my 33-year-old establishment, Anthony’s Italian Kitchen. This was one year after winning best of 207 for Italian food and pizza. People need to wake up, because it’s all going to go away and we will become a slum city.

Call our city representatives and insist on them voting for the new Portland Music Hall.

I am writing to you with my concerns over the proposed order for a 180-day retroactive moratorium for theaters and music halls. This email is a follow up to an earlier email I sent on April 17th attached below, which I encourage you to review again.

As you are well aware, this order was postponed on 4/28 to provide the councilors who sit on the Sustainability and Transportation subcommittee to review some additional data related to traffic and parking, the supposed reasoning for bringing this order to a vote in the first place. At the follow up meeting held on June 16th, data from a study undertaken by the city and presented by Kevin Kraft demonstrated that there is an excess of parking available and that the adjacent lots were underutilized and could easily support the proposed use for this property. Further data provided by the applicant, in connection with the TMP required, demonstrated that the additional traffic that the music venue would generate is not significant and that the current infrastructure along with the signal improvements being proposed at Cumberland and Pearl Streets are more than adequate. Given this information, it is very difficult to understand why this order is still being considered. One can only surmise that the applicant is being specifically targeted for undisclosed reasons.

I personally attended the May City Council meeting on 4/28 at which the vote on this order was postponed. At that meeting there was an opportunity for the public to voice their concerns regarding another matter. Area business owners and residents were very vocal with their concerns regarding the flagrant drug use and deplorable conditions which currently exist in and around Monument Square and the unsafe conditions that the public is subjected to on a day to day basis. I also recently attended the Planning Board meeting held on July 8th at which the Planning Board was requested to amend the PAD ordnances in order to accommodate another action that the City Council is considering regarding penalizing property owners who own a vacant space or building. Rather than penalizing property owners, the City Council should be trying to help these owners redevelop these vacant properties such as the one where the Portland Music Venue is proposed to be. The current conditions of the Congress Street Corridor are untenable and rather taking up orders such as the Hotel Moratorium and the current order 9-25/26 under consideration, which stifle development, the City Council should take decisive positive action to help clean up the area and restore order. Having a thriving new music venue which will host approximately 125 events annually will undoubtedly bring positive vibrant activity to the area, help support area shops, hotels and restaurants, and could be the very stimulus the City needs to help turn the tides.

I cannot express how disappointed I am in hearing you are holding up the ability to have a music venue in Maine. Especially a year round facility.

Not only would it bring employment to the area but it would fulfill a gap that the city has for year round entertainment.

Please reconsider your choices.

I am writing you in support of the Portland Music Hall project and encourage you to pass it through the approval process as quickly as possible and abandon the moratorium designed to stop the development of this first-class music venue.

Though I am not a resident of the area, my family and I are frequent visitors to Portland and have come to love this area since the time our son went to college in central Maine several years ago. I believe that the development of Portland Music Hall will be a benefit to all in the community for years to come.

Please pass this project without further delay!

I am writing to express my serious concern with the proposed moratorium directed at the proposed state of the art music venue in downtown Portland. As you know, the project complies with the recently enacted ReCode, requires no zoning changes or variances and no public funding. It fully complies with everything the City requires and more of the developer.

What is particularly of concern is the issue of “government fair play” where the rules are changed because the opponents cannot prevail on the merits. The project has been subject to close scrutiny by the Planning Board which has devoted much time and energy in reviewing the application only to be told that the City Council is substituting its judgment for theirs. And the approval of the moratorium will convey a message to any one planning to do business in Portland that the Planning Board process may be only the beginning of a political process.

I urge you to reject the moratorium as a truly bad precedent and let the Planning Board fulfill its legal obligations without interference by the City Council.

As always, I fully appreciate the time and effort that you and your colleagues devote to directing and managing city affairs.