After spending the last year making safety improvements to its 61-year-old shooting range on Sawyer Road, the Spurwink Rod & Gun Club in Cape Elizabeth has submitted its first license renewal application to the town.

The gun club has held a license since the early 1960s, but the town has not required the club to reapply every year. However, under the town’s first-ever shooting range ordinance, adopted by the Town Council in March 2014, the club must now apply for a license annually.

According to Mark Mayone, a former gun club president and member of the town’s Firing Range Committee, the club filed its application on Monday, four days before it was due.

The shooting range has been the focus of noise and safety complaints since the mid-1990s, but an influx of criticism by nearby Cross Hill Road neighbors throughout the past two years prompted the town to adopt the new regulations, which primarily call for 100 percent shot containment.

During the past year, the club has also completed a sound contour study and wetland survey of the shooting range to meet ordinance requirements. South Portland resident Quirino “Skip” Lucarelli, a shooting range evaluator and firearms training instructor with the National Rifle Association, performed a safety evaluation of the club in 2012. And in February, the town hired an architectural firm from Georgia to conduct an independent range-safety evaluation as part of the licensing process.

Firing Range Committee Chairwoman Caitlin Jordan, who also serves on the Town Council, said the contractor took an initial assessment of the property on April 1, but was scheduled to complete the full evaluation at a later date. His next visit is yet to be determined.

In order for the gun club to begin its upgrades, the council granted an exception to the shooting range ordinance to give the code enforcement officer the authority to issue building permits prior to submission and approval of the shooting range license application – but only if an independent safety evaluation is performed and reviewed by the Firing Range Committee.

The club received a $28,000 grant from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife last September to partially pay for improvements to the aging facility as part of a “No Blue Sky” bullet containment project. Upgrades include the installation of two, 8-foot-tall rubber-coated concrete walls to absorb the sound of gunshots, and two of four rubber backstop berms to enhance safety.

Mayone said reconstruction of the shooting range is about 50 percent complete.

In the summer of 2016, the club plans to level out the shooting range terrain with 1,250 yards of clean fill and construct three additional shot-containment walls and rubber berms to bring the range up to National Rifle Association specifications. Due to financial constraints, however, further plans to upgrade the facility, such as installing engineered baffles above the range to contain stray bullets, and building a 35-by-14-foot shooting shed to reduce noise, will not be built until 2017.

“It used to be this beautiful grassy field,” said Mayone of the upgraded shooting range. “Now it’s a much more industrial-looking area. It’s a big change from what people are used to at the club.”

It costs $65 a year to join the club. Mayone said the membership has dwindled about 20 percent since the beginning of 2015, due to fears that the club would eventually shut down as a result of the controversy with the neighbors. At one point, he said, there were 315 members.

“They are nervous that they won’t be able to shoot anywhere, so they haven’t joined up,” said Mayone. “They are nervous they will spend their money and won’t have a place to come shoot.”

Windham-based sound engineer Stephen Ambrose met with the Firing Range Committee in February. He said reducing noise at the shooting range is about the club being a “good acoustic neighbor.” Installing physical barriers, such as a shooting shed, could help capture sound waves from gunfire and knock the sound of gunfire to the ground, he said.

Ambrose also suggested limiting the times more powerful guns can be fired at the shooting range. Gunshots tend to startle people much more than equally loud noises, particularly in quiet neighborhoods like Cross Hill. He said establishing certain times of day to shoot larger guns would allow the neighbors to psychologically prepare for loud noise. According to Ambrose, guns cause a shockwave that travels faster and further in colder weather.

Sound should not be measured primarily by decibel level, but also by human response, he said.

“People expect sound to be quieter in the late afternoon and the evening,” said Ambrose. “Your noisiest activity should not be after 3 p.m. Time of day makes a big difference. Those guys that have big guns will have to change their schedule and get down (to the shooting range) during the heat of the day.”

According to the club’s president, Tammy Walter, it is estimated that it will cost about another $85,000 to complete the upgrades. Nearly $40,000 of the budget will be used to eventually build a new shooting shed, and the remaining money will be used to build more walls. In the past, she said, neighbors mentioned donating money to the club to put toward the shooting shed construction, “but we have not seen anything.”

In 2014, the club raised about $38,000 through grants and fundraising for safety upgrades and future noise abatement projects at the shooting range, said Mayone. While the club continues to seek grants for its upgrades, the club is also soliciting private donations.

Walter said despite the club’s recent construction efforts, Cross Hill Road neighbors continue to complain about noise impacts. Jordan said several residents who live in the nearby Cross Hill development continue to share concerns with the Firing Range Committee, mostly about gunshot sounds. Cape Elizabeth Police Sgt. Paul Fenton, also a member of the town’s Firing Range Committee, said the panel receives at least two complaints per month.

“As (the club) is doing construction, it’s changing the environment of the range so the noise is projecting a little bit differently,” Fenton said.

The gun club members have “taken it upon themselves to spend tens of thousands of dollars and man hours to work collaboratively with the citizens.”

Efforts to reach neighbors were unsuccessful by the Current’s deadline Tuesday afternoon.

Jordan reiterated that state law does not require shooting ranges to be licensed and prohibits towns from enacting noise ordinances with regard to shooting ranges.

“It’s just not something that can be addressed at this point,” said Jordan. “We are just looking at the safety.”

“We have spent a large amount of money over the last year on range modernization, upgrades and improvements,” Walter said. “Our progress has been nothing short of amazing. Our members and our partners at Inland Fisheries and Wildlife deserve nothing but praise for the modernization of our range that they have endorsed.”

Responding to the club’s recent safety improvements, Jordan said, “To me it sounds great, but I also haven’t seen the (independent) safety evaluation.”

Jordan said the Firing Range Committee will schedule a meeting to review the club’s license application later this month or in early May, at which point the committee also expects to review the results of the independent safety evaluation.

“Our membership just needs to know that we are not going anywhere. We are doing a great job as fast as we possibly can,” said Mayone.

Tammy Walter, Spurwink Rod & Gun Club president, aims a Taurus revolver at one of the new rubber-padded targets at the upgraded shooting range. After a year of making safety improvements, the club has filed its first license renewal application with the town of Cape Elizabeth.Staff photo by Kayla J. CollinsTammy Walter, president of the Spurwink Rod & Gun Club in Cape Elizabeth, holds up rubber pieces from one of the new rubber backstop berms intended to enhance safety. The berms are part of several safety improvements the town required of the club.Staff photo by Kayla J. Collins