Amphitheater and Neighbors Near Settlement : Courts: 10-year legal battle over concert noise at Costa Mesa venue may end with operators’ assurance they’ll hold it down.

After a contentious 10-year legal battle over loud music, the Pacific Amphitheatre and its residential neighbors may be calling a truce.

The amphitheater’s current operators have given assurances that sound from the venue will not exceed set levels, according to a tentative settlement.

And the former operators have agreed to give free tickets to about 6,000 families within a mile of the Pacific Amphitheatre. Those tickets will be good for shows at other facilities the company now runs, including the Arrowhead Pond at Anaheim and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.

The agreement will go before Orange County Superior Court Judge James R. Ross on Feb. 2 for final review, said attorney Richard L. Spix, who represents 39 homeowners in the case. If approved, the settlement is expected to end the courtroom tug-of-war between homeowners and various groups that have run the amphitheater.

“I’m relatively pleased with the terms of the settlement,” Spix said. “Whoever owns (the amphitheater) will have to live by the restrictions.”

Noel Hatch, lawyer for the Pacific Amphitheatre Partnership, said he hopes the settlement will bring “peace in our time.”

The legal dispute began in 1984 when a homeowner who lived 2,300 feet from the amphitheater filed a lawsuit against Ned West Inc., which then owned the venue, contending that loud music violated Orange County’s noise ordinance. Under that law, the average noise level permissible in residential areas during the daytime is 50 decibels.

That case was resolved when a judge later allowed the amphiteater to emit noise averaging 55 decibels, as measured at the resident’s house, Spix said.

For comparison, noise from “early morning back yard crickets range from 38 to 44 decibels,” Spix explained, and the sound of “a jet airplane flying 100 feet above you is about 110 decibels.”

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But some residents were upset when noise from the amphitheater continued, Spix said. In March of 1990, 39 residents from the Mesa del Mar neighborhood north of the amphitheater sued Ned West, the music promoters who operated the amphitheater at the time. Each resident asked for $25,000 in damages.

In a separate dispute, the amphitheater’s owners later sued the Orange County Fairgrounds for loss of a concert during the county fair’s run. The amphitheater leases land from the fairgrounds.

A 1992 judgment in that case required that the amphitheater owners sell the facility to the state of California, and that whoever operated it keep noise at a stricter level, based on locations inside the amphitheater. It is currently owned by the state.

Spix said the tentative settlement involving 39 homeowners was drawn up in December and includes provisions that allow the residents to take any noise complaints to a judge.

Under the settlement, the amphitheater partnership also will reimburse the homeowners for $250,000 in legal fees and other costs, Spix said.

The occupants of about 6,000 households will receive four tickets to upcoming events at other venues, he said.

In addition, the Pacific Amphitheatre Partnership pledged never to own the facility again, attorneys said.

“We feel it is a very positive thing for the whole community,” Hatch said. “We think it will end the animosity that seems to have existed out there over the years.”