Although there are no plans or funding for a rebuild, members of Lewes’s Park and Recreation Commission discussed a potential redesign of the stage at Stango Park at a meeting this month.
The stage hosts a summer concert series sponsored by the city. The concept for a redesigned stage area arose from a collaboration between the Garden of All Ages and Lewes in Bloom as part of their coordinated planting efforts. It would feature a slightly moved and enlarged stage area.
However, Christine Besche, a commission member who introduced the concept design, there is no urgency to move ahead with the plan.
“Right now the stage area is functioning perfectly well,” she said. “It's a little small and oriented in an unusual way. This would actually reorient the stage so it faces more out towards the park.”
Lewes’s Parks and Marina Administrator, Giulia Kirsch, noted that a larger stage would be a good thing for the park.
“Enlargement would be helpful,” she said. “We do have quite a few larger bands and they're not fitting very well. We're talking the concert bands, the army bands.”
Kirsch said those larger bands amount to about three performances each year, or about one-fourth of the total concerts held on the stage.
Commission member Rodney Robinson seemed skeptical, however, noting that the park also had a large pavilion, constructed since the site concept was created.
“If you've got a big pavilion out there, do you need to build another structure? That's my question,” he asked.
But, that pavilion is not technically in Stango Park and is operated by the city library, meaning Lewes would not have any control over the performance schedule.
Commission chair Kay Carnahan called the stage redesign “aspirational” and there are no announced plans to ask the city council for funding at this point. There is no estimate of how much the stage redesign could cost.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
