7-16-2023 1:57am

Music To Their Ears! Blaine Ecstatic About New Band Shell Coming To Aquatore Park

Tom Akaolisa Editor

It took four years to get approval and will cost $4 million, but the coveted band shell at Aquatore Park is going to become reality.

After a lengthy, COVID-delayed wait, Aquatore is getting something that Blaine city officials have wanted for a long time.

“Basically we are out here to celebrate the beginning of the band shell,” said Jerome Krieger of Blaine Parks and Rec at Thursday’s groundbreaking.

There were plenty of smiles and tosses of dirt into the air at the ceremony. The band shell will be a game changer for Aquatore.

“It’s one of the final pieces of the puzzle here at the park, here at Aquatore,” Krieger said. “We have the new shelters that were just done last year from the 1980’s that we took out and rebuilt. We have the new playground that’s been here for the last four or five years. We have the new Mary Ann Young Center. So everything down here has basically been updated.”

“The whole Blaine Festival committee, the board, everybody has worked together to try to bring this together,” said Steve Kanoff from the Blaine Festival. “The city has done unbelievable work on this. Jerome, our liaison, he’s at every meeting and he has put hours of effort into this.”

“Multi-use space”

Now that ground has been broken, the real bulldozers and shovels can start moving earth soon.

“We will start construction next week,” Krieger said. “The completion date for the contractor is June 14th of 2024 which will be in time for the festival next year.”

The bandshell will be a centerpiece for the annual Blaine Festival, but will also get plenty of other use.

Said Krieger: “Any summer programs we can utilize it for, whether it be theater, music, it does have multi-use space in it.”

There were plenty of hoops for Blaine to jump through to make the bandshell a reality, but collaboration and teamwork ultimately paid off.

“It was a long process to get this far,” Krieger said. “It was a lot of patience by our city council, a lot of patience by our Blaine festival committee.”

The Aquatore’s bathroom – which was built in 1971 – will meet the wrecking ball and the band shell will have new restroom facilities that anyone in the park can use. The Blaine Festival kicked in $1 million for the project.