Noise complaints in city spiked during summer
Residents sound off once more, as COVID restrictions on bars and restaurants ease
STAMFORD — The noise coming from rooftop bars in the South End is unlivable. It is unhealthy. It is unbearable, or at least, that’s what Harbor Point resident Elena Gazzola said in a 400-plus word email.
“When in the middle of the night, you literally can understand every word screamed at floor 2 while you live on floor 18, that will tell you a story,” she wrote to the city. The 64-year-old pediatrician lives right across from Sign of the Whale, a sleek restaurant with a rooftop bar.
At 9 p.m. on a recent Friday evening, music is gently bumping from the top floor while the sounds of laughter up above muddle with the Top 100 radio hits and closing rideshare doors.
Gazzola is sick of it, and she isn’t alone in her crusade against the racket.
As the state eased out of its COVID cocoon throughout the late spring and early summer, people have put on their dancing shoes for the first time in a year. Both indoor and outdoor festivities are back at full capacity, and in some of Stamford’s denser
neighborhoods, a return to normal has also meant an end to peace and quiet for some neighbors.
Pandemic-related restrictions on businesses first started to relax in early March, and Connecticut marched steadily forward. Gov. Ned Lamont on May 1 moved the curfew on restaurants to 12 a.m. About two weeks later, on May 19, the state ripped off the Band-Aid entirely. The only mandate that remained required patrons to wear masks while at indoor establishments.
The noise commenced not long after.
The city received no official noise complaints from April 1 until June 8, according to data acquired by Hearst Connecticut Media Group. But once they started trickling into Fix It Stamford — the city’s virtual ticketing system — the objections wouldn’t stop.
“The noise level coming from upper outdoor deck at (Fortina) restaurant is deafening and has been going until 2 am every weekend night!!! Violates noise ordinances and mental health laws !!!!!! ” wrote one resident on June 22 in a FixIt Stamford request, obtained by Hearst through a Freedom of Information request.
The next day, another complaint came in, this time against a Downtown bar.
“Would like to file a noise complaint against Brickhouse,” wrote another. “They blast their music well past the allowed times and it can be heard from a block away. This includes 12:30am on a Monday.”
The day after, someone submitted a full-length letter and videos of the noise at Fortina in an attempt to spur the city to action.
Neither Fortina, Brickhouse, Sign of the Whale or the other places with complaints leveled against them responded to requests for comment from Hearst.
Between June 8 and July 29, the city fielded 19 noise complaints: 14 in the South End, two in Downtown, two in Glenbrook and one in Springdale.
Most are eateries that serve alcohol and are open until at least midnight. But even Sterling Farms, one of Stamford’s municipal golf courses, had a complaint leveraged against it. Two restaurants in the Harbor Point area, Sign of the Whale and Fortina, received five noise complaints each.
“Sterling Hill Golf course is using leaf blowers LOUD since 5:45am,” wrote one resident in a Fix It Stamford request, referring to the course on Newfield Avenue. “STOP THIS NONSENSE for a dumb sport! It’s the weekend. Every morning I wake up to the noise pollution!”
Golf course manager Paul Grillo knows that his facility has an early start — Sterling Farms opens at 5:30 a.m. — and he said that’s why they intentionally start maintenance work at the beginning of the course in the mornings and work outwards towards abutting homes.
“We try very hard to be neighborly,” Grillo said. “As for the dumb sport comment, I’m sure the 200,000 people who drive through our gates would disagree.”
In the eyes of Stamford’s noise ordinance, nighttime begins at 8 p.m. on Monday through Saturday, and at 5:01 p.m. on Sunday and holidays. Nighttime hours end at 7:59 a.m. on Monday through Saturday and end at 9:59 a.m. on Sundays and federal holidays. After the 8 p.m. cutoff, emitters in industrial and commercial districts cannot make more than 45 decibels worth of noise as measured from a neighboring owner’s property.
As a comparison, a quiet library registers at approximately 40 decibels, according to the American Academy of Audiology. The hum of a refrigerator hits 50 decibels. An average conversation hovers around 60 decibels.
While some neighbors feel like there’s no end in sight to the music playing and people going out until the wee hours of the morning, officials at Stamford Government Center are well aware of the problem. In response to the spike in complaints after the governor lifted restrictions, the city created a Restaurant and Bar Task Force “to educate and enforce ordinances and other legal requirements,” according to city Director of Public Safety Ted Jankowski, who shared news of the task force with residents in an email.
The Task Force is made up of representatives from the Environmental Health and Inspections Department, the Fire Marshal’s Office and the Stamford Police Department. Starting on Thursday evenings, the task force ambles through the South End and Downtown, along with other neighborhoods, making sure that the merriment stays under control.
“The goal is really to bring everybody back to understanding the (noise) ordinance, understanding any laws,” Jankowski said. “People were used to it being quiet. Now, all of a sudden, things are coming back. It’s got to be that balance and hopefully we’ll get to that balance.”
John DaRosa, a longtime South Ender who lives on Elmcroft Road, sees it the same way.
“People are being freed up from being contained in their homes and neighborhoods,” he said. The bars downtown have been replete with patrons for years now, and the South End has only continued to expand. It makes sense to him that, after a year of relative silence, people are back in full force at the neighborhood’s haunts
But that doesn’t mean it’s not personally annoying.
“I’ve lived a long time in the South End, and we’ve always had noise at some of the restaurants,” he said.
Now there’s just more people, and by extension, more noise.