Ever After Fest gets noise exemption
Councillors include conditions for Breslau festival
KITCHENER — City councillors on Monday unanimously approved a noise exemption for the Ever After Music Festival, which is expanding this year from one stage to three.
The electronic dance music festival attracted a number of noise complaints when it started in 2015, but has worked hard to ensure its setup does not cause noise to spill into nearby residential areas, said organizer Robert Mattachione.
The festival is set to run June 2 to 4 from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. at Bingemans.
Mattachione said the festival is on track to sell out this year, with 31,000 people attending during each of the three days. Last year, about 21,000 people attended each day.
This year, the festival will add two smaller stages highlighting Canadian and emerging Ontario talent. As in 2016, the main stage will face northeast, so that sound will travel to an area where there are no homes, through a wooded and industrial area toward the city limits. One of the smaller stages will face that same direction, with the third stage facing toward the Grand River
Bylaw staff reported they received 57 complaints over two days in 2015, “and the noise level was extremely loud.” In 2016, the city received seven complaints, and bylaw staff measured noise at between 50 and 58 decibels “which were well within the permitted levels approved by council,” according to a staff report.
Last year’s efforts to redirect sound toward the northeast and the Grand did provoke about seven complaints from residents in Breslau, across the river in Woolwich Township, Gloria MacNeil, Kitchener’s director of bylaw enforcement, told councillors. Noise tests showed the levels in Breslau weren’t above the 65-decibel limit.
The festival hasn’t studied its economic impact, but Mattachione said organizers have spent more than $12 million in the festival’s three years, though not all of that money was spent locally. A very preliminary estimate pegs the local economic impact of the festival at $10 million, he said, adding that festival goers have come from 35 U.S. states.
“That’s music to my ears,” said Coun. Bil Ioannidis.
Coun. Sarah Marsh asked if the festival would consider shorter hours on Sunday, “because that’s the eve of a workday.”
Mattachione said Sunday was a bigger day in the festival than Friday, and that the festival would suffer with a shorter Sunday. The event will no longer include fireworks on Sunday, however.
The organizers hired “an industry-leading acoutiscal engineering company” to help manage their sound system, the report said, and they plan to angle the main array of speakers inward so that sound is directed at spectators. But bylaw staff caution, “the nature of this type of event, with recorded music, often results in the significant use of low bass tones which are often difficult to contain and can be detected at a distance.”
Councillors voted to exempt the event from the noise bylaw, but with several condi-
tions that were also in place at last year’s festival:
There must be no offensive language from the festival that can be heard in nearby residential areas;
There must be an on-site contact person who can respond to city staff at all times over the three-day event;
Organizers agree to respond to requests from city staff during the event to deal with noise;
Organizers pay the estimated $1,200 cost of a paid duty noise officer in advance of the festival, and that the officer be on site to monitor noise levels throughout the three-day festival;
Noise levels in residential areas not exceed 65 decibels, slightly less than the 70 decibels generated by an air conditioning unit at about 30 metres.
The committee decision must be ratified at city council on April 24.