BANGOR – With a Coast Guard cutter breaking through the ice-covered Penobscot River as a backdrop, National Folk Festival organizers Tuesday announced the receipt of nearly $570,000 in gifts and sponsorships for the event’s three-year stint on the city’s waterfront.

“This is huge,” said Charles “Chip” Hutchins, whose family Tuesday donated $150,000 to the festival, which is expected to draw upward of 75,000 people to the city in its first year in 2002. “It’s going to put Bangor on the map. Get ready to be wowed.”

At the Tuesday news conference in the Alternative Energy building, with its sweeping views of the riverfront where the event will be held, festival organizers announced the Hutchins gift, which brought the effort closer to its $1.5 million goal.

In addition to Hutchins’ donation, Bangor Daily News marketing director Elizabeth Hansen, on behalf of publisher Richard Warren, also announced Tuesday a $150,000 gift to the festival, which she called “one of the most exciting cultural and economic development opportunities our region has ever had.”

Smitten with Bangor’s historic connection with the river, national organizers chose the city from several cities to be host of the festival – which is free to the public – for three days in August in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The festival, which features performers from throughout the country, was last hosted by East Lansing, Mich., where about 100,000 people attended last summer.

With organizers gearing up for the much-anticipated Aug. 23, 24 and 25 event, the two donations, coupled with a $150,000 commitment from the city, came as welcome news, festival committee chairman John Rohman said.

But Rohman, who also serves as chairman of the festival’s fund-raising committee, made no bones about the need for more financial support.

“Get out your checkbooks,” he told the group of about 40 people at the news conference, later adding that the committee needs to secure about $800,000 to see the festival through its first year.

In addition to the three $150,000 commitments – $50,000 a year for each of the festival’s three years – additional gifts to date have come from Merrill Bank, the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, the Davis Family Foundation, the King and Jean Cummings Charitable Trust, the Margaret E. Burnham Charitable Trust and a number of individuals and small businesses.

But before the first musician plays, much remains to be done, with festival organizers coordinating the hundreds of volunteers already on board and transforming the city’s once-industrial waterfront into a venue with five stages from Pickering Square to the heart of the city’s riverfront.

But the festival, expected to infuse $1 million a day into the city, is more than an economic engine, Rohman said, it is a means of reviving a sense of community in the city and the region.

“This is our festival,” he said.

The National Council for the Traditional Arts, based in Washington, D.C., began the festival in the 1930s. In recent years, the festival – the oldest multicultural event in the nation – has taken up three-year residences in cities throughout the United States.