Sag Harbor Community Band To Kick Off Season — And Begin Search For A New Home

A rite of summer, weekly concerts by the Sag Harbor Community Band, will return next week, with the band taking up its residency on the sidewalk in front of the American Legion on Bay Street for an 8 p.m. show on Tuesday, July 5.

The shows will continue through the summer, ending on August 30, the Tuesday before Labor Day.

But this will be the last year the band will perform on its familiar stage before an audience of people who sit on lawn chairs scattered about on Bay Street, tapping their feet as the band runs through a sampling of popular songs and military marches.

Last year, Sag Harbor Village Police Chief Austin J. McGuire said he could not in good conscience, as the village’s top public safety official, sign off on an event that requires an audience to sit in the street, even if it is blocked on both sides by police cars, and a pair of traffic control officers are posted to the scene to redirect traffic.

“Putting people in a public street is not a good idea,” McGuire said on Monday. He added that traffic has increased tenfold over the decades the concerts have been held. “Thousands of cars go down that street every day,” he said, “and most people aren’t expecting to encounter cars blocking the roadway.”

McGuire said that he made his feelings known last year in part because the force was short-staffed. Even though the department is back to full strength, “I stand by the fact that it is just not safe,” he said.

Last year, the Village Board overruled the police chief, but this year when it approved the slate of concerts at its June 14 meeting, Mayor Jim Larocca said representatives of the band and village would put their heads together over the coming months to find a new location for the band, starting next year.

“The primary target would be Steinbeck Park,” the mayor said of possible new venues. “But we’ve got a year to figure it out.”

The band’s president, Bruce Beyer, whose parents were charter members, said he has been tagging along or participating as long as he can remember. He said he was for any solution that would guarantee the band plays on, although he said John Steinbeck Waterfront Park might pose some obstacles unless the band is protected from the wind.

In the past, he said the band used to set up on the patio on the left side of the Legion Building, which meant that fewer audience members had to sit in the street, but the patio was turned over to the Dockside restaurant, which leases space in the building.

“Times change,” he said. “Bay Street is not the same as when I was young.” He said traffic has gotten heavier and more “people are rude and push their weight around.”

By the same token, he said, the band, formed in 1957, was originally a marching band and rarely played seated concerts.

This year, he said the band would try to do a better job corralling the area with barriers and consider adding additional lighting to make it safer.

“My main goal, Beyer said, “is to get the people in the village to hold a fundraiser so we could get enough money to have a permanent setup at Marine, Steinbeck or Mashashimuet Park.”

He said a small portable stage that could be pulled into position each week would be one solution, but that he would love to see a permanent bandstand built with the names of the band’s charter members on it.

“I would like to see that before I die,” he said. “We could call it the Sag Harbor Community Bandstand.”