Can Rock Club and a Cinema Coexist? Testing, Testing

The future of Peppers Golden Bear as a major rock venue is in question, as operators wait to learn whether a new, expensive soundproofing system will protect their soon-to-be upstairs neighbor--a movie theater complex--from blasts of amplified music.

“We’re in limbo,” John L. Tiernan, Peppers’ chief executive officer, said Thursday at the Pierside Pavilion restaurant and nightclub that has been trying to assume the legacy of the original Golden Bear, which was the county’s leading pop nightclub until it closed five years ago.

Tiernan said the soundproofing is being installed to stop noise from leaking through Peppers’ ceiling and ducts into the space that will be occupied by a Mann Theatres complex.

If the problem cannot be solved, he said, Peppers, which opened in August, may have to drop loud rock shows.

Henry Penso, chief operating officer of the pavilion’s co-developer, California Resorts, said tests to be conducted Thursday should determine whether Peppers can let rock bands blast away.

“We feel very comfortable that we have resolved the problem,” Penso said, noting that Peppers’ lease allows sound up to 110 decibels, “a level that blows you away.”

He said Peppers should be able to live with a somewhat lower cap of 105 decibels, if necessary. At that level, the club could handle “95% of the bands on the market. Hopefully, we’ll be able to reach that level.”

Still, Tiernan said, the sound situation, if not resolved, could jeopardize Peppers’ plans to be a major rock venue: “We have always said we wanted to do something special here. Other options are open if the sound becomes a major problem. There are a lot of entertainment things you can get into besides rock, but it is our hope we can solve this problem.”

Among those options, Tiernan said, are comedy and dance nights with recorded music, both of which the club has now, along with shows by local rockers and softer rock and pop.

Because of the sound problem, Tiernan said, Peppers has frozen major bookings since January; management did not want to book big shows in advance, only to face possible cancellations.

The sound problem--and competition from the smaller but better established Coach House in San Juan Capistrano--has slowed efforts by the 580-capacity Peppers to establish itself on the itineraries of touring bands. However, Tiernan said, he is “not unhappy” with the draw the club has had so far with a mix of local acts, dance nights and occasional name bands.

“We haven’t made the impact in the music industry that we need to make,” he said. “But we have the rest of our life to do it.”

Penso said that the Mann theaters had been scheduled to open Feb. 23 but that the date was recently pushed back to late March or early April.