Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 02:29:00

The roof over the stage once sheltered train platforms at Union Station - saved from the wreckers in the 1960s and hauled to a peninsula on the Fore River, where it now covers Maine's biggest summer concerts. Thompson's Point is a waterfront venue and events campus at 1 Thompson's Point in Portland, Maine. The concert era began when the State Theatre's operators signed on in September 2014 as exclusive promoter for the outdoor site, part of Forefront Partners' 105 million dollar redevelopment of 30 acres of former industrial railyard. The Depot Pavilion - the restored Union Station platform shed - anchors 3.3 acres of riverside lawn on the peninsula's southern tip, with capacity around 6,500 for the State Theatre Summer Concert Series that gives Portland its only permanent large outdoor stage. The campus around it filled in with the 25,000-square-foot brick-and-beam Brick South event hall, the Halo at the Point function space, Bissell Brothers brewing, the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine and a season-round food-and-drink trade. Winter converts the pavilion into New England's finest outdoor skating rink, and the year fills out with food-truck nights, markets, festivals and weddings - the full civic calendar of a reclaimed brownfield. Rail and trail access make the point unusually reachable: the Portland Transportation Center sits adjacent, with Amtrak's Downeaster and the Portland Trails network at the gate. A demolished station's shed, a dead railyard and a tidal river edge - Portland assembled its favorite summer venue almost entirely from what the city had already thrown away. The booking level rose with the buildout: national headliners that once skipped northern New England now route Portland between Boston and Montreal stops, and a summer evening on the lawn - river behind the stage, trains easing past the point - has become the postcard version of the city's revival.