Making noise

100 complaints filed over music at Ever After festival

KITCHENER — The pounding beat of an electronic dance music festival has left City of Kitchener officials with a noise-complaints headache.

City residents filed about 100 noise complaints Sunday evening, the third and final day of the Ever After Music Festival event at Bingemans.

On Saturday, there were no noise complaints.

On Friday, the festival’s first day, there were 17, including calls to police and emails.

The annual festival, which was granted a noise bylaw exemption by city council to allow up to 65 decibels in residential areas, ran until 11 p.m. each night.

Readings taken by the city showed the noise-level maximum wasn’t exceeded. But still the complaints flooded in on Sunday night.

“We do recognize that the noise was quite intrusive to residents (Sunday) night,” the city’s director of bylaw enforcement, Gloria MacNeil, said in an email to The Record on Monday.

MacNeil acknowledged the noise levels allowed were too high, especially for a Sunday night, and the city will be reconsidering the matter.

“It was quite overcast (Sunday), which does have an impact on noise and how it travels,” MacNeil explained. “During the afternoon, the decibel levels were in the mid 40s. However, (Sunday) night from about 8 p.m., we were averaging reads in the high 50s.”

The city’s readings were taken by a noise officer, who would visit the home from which the complaint was filed. Festival founder Gabriel Mattacchione agreed overcast conditions helped push the sound further from Bingemans.

He said he did his best to keep the sound down, when issues arose.

“I work very closely with bylaw,” Mattacchione said on Monday.

“When they say to turn it down, I jump behind the decks and I do it myself. So we reacted quite well and quite quickly, as quickly as we could with everything going on yesterday. We turned it down so we were within our limits.”

The festival, according to a security company working the event, drew an estimated crowd of 10,000 on Friday, about 17,000 on Saturday and 12,000 to 14,000 on Sunday.

Mattacchione said there was an issue scanning wristbands during peak festival times on the weekend. But he said the ticketing company reconciliation shows the crowds were more than 25,000 per day.

In 2015, the city received 57 noise complaints over the festival’s two days. A year ago, only seven complaints were made following efforts to redirect sound toward the northeast and the Grand River. Those seven complaints came from across the river in Breslau.

This year, the festival grew from one stage to three.

And on Sunday evening, a number of Kitchener residents grew impatient with the persistent Ever After beat. The bass-driven music was bleeding indoors in some cases, said Ward 1 Coun. Scott Davey.

“I think the average person is accepting if they’re outside hearing some noise,” said Davey, who found the noise was more noticeable at his own home last year.

“They’re fine having the disruption maybe for one weekend a year. They’re OK with that. Where we need to draw the line is when people are inside and their doors are closed and they have to go to work or school the next day. They shouldn’t be able to hear anything.”

Ward 2 Coun. Dave Schnider wants the city to consider a lower maximum noise level for the event, as well as an earlier finish time on Sunday.

“We have to sit down and really research this,” said Schnider, who took one noise complaint from Fairway Road and Lackner Boulevard — about five kilometres from Bingemans.

“Maybe we need to bring some sound engineers in on our discussions on this and find that sweet spot where we can enjoy the economic benefits of a festival like this — but our residents don’t lose sleep and lose their enjoyment of their neighbourhoods and backyards.”

Mattacchione isn’t sure an earlier finish time on Sunday fits with the Ever After crowd.

“There’s definitely things we can do to work together,” Mattacchione said. “This type of genre, and with the headliners we bring in, doesn’t really equate to having an event end any earlier than we do. A lot of them actually go later than we do.”

Ever After plans to return next year.

“Oh, yeah,” Mattacchione said. “Kitchener and Waterloo is our home.”