Brewer opens new music park at former Getchell Brothers site

Brewer’s Riverwalk trail has a new attraction built on land that once belonged to a local ice company.
Brewer city leaders on Thursday unveiled a park full of gleaming silver musical instruments on the city’s Riverwalk, a mile-long paved trail that runs along the Penobscot River. The park, named “Cool Tones on the Riverwalk,” has several large musical instruments, such as tubular bells, a xylophone and drums, for visitors to play.
The percussion instruments are from Percussion Play, an English company known for making long-lasting instruments, said D’arcy Main-Boyington, Brewer’s economic development director.
“We’re always looking for new amenities for the waterfront that will capture people’s attention,” Main-Boyington said. “We wanted something that would give people a reason to spend time on the waterfront.”
The park sits on the side of the path, just north of the former Getchell Brothers buildings in a wooded area between the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge and the parking lot for the trail at the intersection of Betton and Penobscot streets. The debut of the park comes months after Brewer purchased the land.
The park was created using a $50,000 donation from Doug Farnham, former owner of the Getchell Brothers company, according to Main-Boyington.
Farnham said he made the donation as a way to give back to the community, add another fun feature on the riverfront where he spent much of his childhood at his family’s ice company, and to commemorate the ice harvesting industry that was instrumental to the region.
It was the city’s idea to use the donation for a music park along the Riverwalk, Farnham said.
“This area has been very important to me, so when we sold the property, we wanted to do something to thank the community for all it has given us,” Farnham said during the ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday. “At the same time, we want this to be a way to remember the history of the ice industry on the river, which was such an important part of the Bangor and Brewer economy.”
Farnham also commissioned a bronze relief sculpture that will depict the ice harvesting industry, which will be installed next to the instruments when it’s finished.
Founded in 1888, Getchell Brothers provided packaged ice to grocery, convenience and liquor stores in Maine for decades. The family-owned company moved to Brewer in the 1940s and used the two buildings as a warehouse, office space and ice production, but the two buildings have sat empty for several years.
In April, the city purchased the former Getchell Brothers buildings at 1 and 11 Union St. from the company for $550,000 with the goal of decontaminating the sites and putting them back on the market.
Since then, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection conducted an environmental assessment of the area to detect any contaminants in and around the buildings and presented several remediation options.
Those options ranged from doing nothing and leaving the site untouched to removing all hazardous materials, such as asbestos and lead, from the buildings and the soil at the site.
Ultimately, the Maine DEP paid roughly $30,000 to hire a contractor to remove asbestos, lead paint and other waste, such as abandoned furniture, from the buildings, Main-Boyington said.
The soil around the buildings wasn’t deemed to be dangerous because the buildings weren’t going to be used immediately for housing and there wasn’t a risk of contaminants getting into the water, Main-Boyington said. Additionally, the Maine DEP suggested putting a deed restriction on the property so it couldn’t be used for residential purposes.
If a future developer wants to put housing on the site, they will need to ensure any contaminated soil is removed or buried low enough to prevent it from migrating, Main-Boyington said.