It has been interesting to watch the social media response to Julia Ritchey’s coverage last week of the ongoing dispute between The Wormhole and some nearby residents.
Few things can be more disruptive to quality of life than excessive noise, and folks seem to take sides reflexively in disputes about sound even when they don’t have any real stake in the debate and have no knowledge of the particulars.
When it comes to noise, the devil is definitely in the details.
Sound can do strange things, and there will be conflicts in pretty much every city that has mixed-use areas with residents and nightclubs in proximity to each other.
We lack a clear framework in Savannah for dealing with those conflicts, but more on that in a moment.
As we engage in the public debate, we need to resist the temptation to bring our prejudices and assumptions to such conflicts.
And, if we are going to have productive discourse about difficult issues in mixed-use areas, we need to accept that many things can be true simultaneously.
The Wormhole has never seemed too loud when I’ve been there, but that doesn’t mean that the bass isn’t rattling windows more than 100 feet away.
Neighbors who complain about noise are not all cousins of Rev. Moore in “Footloose.”
Given the sheer impossibility of meeting the letter of the law regarding sound, it’s also understandable that club owners would be reluctant to attempt any expensive remediation.
If your home’s windows are rattling deep into the night from the bass at a nearby club, you would seem to have every right to complain. Unless, perhaps, the club was there before your house was.
We’ve had situations in Savannah where new residential units were created in proximity to existing clubs and cases where new clubs have opened close to residents.
Those situations are fundamentally different, but our existing ordinance treats them the same.
In this dispute and in similar ones, live music has been deemed the culprit, but DJs were spinning the last two times I walked out of clubs because I found them too loud.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that neighborhood disputes can eventually become so toxic that no amicable solutions are possible. I’m hopeful that doesn’t happen in this case.
The situation regarding The Wormhole is fundamentally a neighborhood dispute, not one started by city officials as many social media comments suggest.
But the city is involved now, as are other zoning officials and the courts.
And it’s hard to achieve any fair, predictable outcome when we clearly need a full revision of our ordinances regarding noise.
The failings of the current ordinance
Kevin Rose knows a few things about sound.
Rose has worked on hundreds of projects since founding Elevated Basement Studio in 1995. He routinely engineers live recordings during the Savannah Music Festival.
Rose is also a musician and an architect who has worked on myriad projects in more than 20 years at Lominack Kolman Smith Architects.
“It’s predictable in some ways but a black art in others,” Rose said when I asked about the predictability of sound.
He’s not surprised, however, that residents are hearing bass so far from an uninsulated nightclub.
“The bass develops at longer distances and takes more air and mass to stop it,” Rose said. It’s even possible that buildings closer to the source could be hearing less bass than ones farther away.
But Rose states flatly that we can’t adequately address any of these issues on a civic level through our current ordinance.
The problems are twofold.
Rose notes that the current decibel limits are so low that they are often exceeded by the ambient noise level of the city.
“I’ve taken sound pressure level readings outside of several bars that were closed, historic monuments, City Hall and many places around town that never dipped below the current ordinance, which is more in line with rural ordinances than an urban one,” Rose said.
Savannah also prohibits any noise disturbance that can be heard across a property line. That means that pretty much every establishment that plays music or even just caters to loud talkers is in violation of the ordinance whenever the front door opens.
Rose continued: “We have recognized entertainment districts, and our planning focus needs to become less Euclidean and more performance-based, taking into account that thriving cities all share one thing: Support for the arts.”
“Ticketing businesses with unenforceable ordinances hurts the businesses, the musicians and the neighbors simultaneously,” Rose said.
Off the top of my head, I could name more than half a dozen local sound experts who, like Rose, would be thrilled to help craft a better ordinance.
Let’s hope officials take advantage of that expertise and that willingness sooner rather than later.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawer@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.