LEWISTON — Members of a volunteer committee are putting finishing touches on their proposed designs for a renovated and refurbished Kennedy Park gazebo.

Their latest idea moves the gazebo about 250 feet southeast, from its historic location in Kennedy Park’s northeastern section to the park’s eastern entrance, near the Bates-Walnut streets intersection.

“If you are walking from Walnut across Bates, you see this set of stairs that brings you down into the park,”Planning Director Gil Arsenault said. “The thought is we’d put the bandstand just beyond those stairs and we’d have a short connecting bridge, or connector, from the sidewalk to the bandstand floor. It would be at grade with the sidewalk and yet the front elevation overlooking the park would be about 5 feet above grade.”

The gazebo has been closed and fenced off for two years due to safety concerns — damage to the concrete floor of the structure as well as erosion on the brick supports and wear on the wooden columns and the wood structure under the roof.

Councilors created the restoration committee in November to raise money and come up with ways to repair the failing gazebo. They agreed to use $75,000 from Lewiston’s federal Community Development Block Grant allocation for part of the repairs, but said the bulk must come from donations.

Committee members decided last winter to come up with design options, then print brochures to help collect private donations to pay for the work. Councilors in March allocated $4,000 out of that $75,000 for engineering and design options and to help create the brochure.

The gazebo’s floor is at least 5 feet off of the ground. To meet federal Americans with Disabilities Act requirements and make it wheelchair accessible, the city would need to build either a long ramp or a lift elevator up to the gazebo floor or lower the gazebo to make it level with the park’s grade.

Both the ramp and the lift would make the renovation especially expensive.

A structural review showed that only the gazebo’s roof is in good enough shape to be saved.

“Structurally, there really is no value to anything below the roof,” Arsenault said. “It meets no code requirements or anything.”

Building a new structure, with stairs on either side and bridge connecting the gazebo to Bates Street, became an option at that point. If the plan moves forward, the existing roof would be moved to the new structure.

The city’s Historic Preservation Review board has already signed off on the plan, and Arsenault said he expects the volunteer committee will present the idea to councilors in June.

According to a history of the gazebo written by local historian Douglas Hodgkin, the first bandstand was built in the park in 1868 but the current gazebo was built in 1925.

Since then, it’s been used for concerts and band performances as well as political rallies for local, Maine and national candidates.

staylor@sunjournal.com

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