Amphitheatre Noise Rules to Get Hearing

Though the multimillion-dollar lawsuit that kept it shuttered for three years has been settled, troubles still plague the Pacific Amphitheatre like a case of tinnitus.

One question, perhaps the most important one, still rings: How loud should performers at the 18,500-seat complex at the Orange County Fairgrounds be allowed to play?

A hearing Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court may finally put an end to the 10-year-old debate. Judge Robert E. Thomas will decide whether a 1993 “sound covenant” reached when the fairgrounds acquired the amphitheater from the former owners, the Nederlander Organization, remains valid.

The fair contends the sound rules were written fraudulently by the Nederlander Organization and should be scrapped.

“The sound covenant was placed in that agreement illegally,” said Fair Board Director Don Saltarelli, a former Orange County supervisor. “We don’t want to do anything that would bring the serious sound problems to the neighbors that once existed.”

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Residents who live in the area want to keep the regulations intact or make them more restrictive to protect the peace and quiet of the nearby Mesa del Mar neighborhood, which was regularly rattled from 1983 to 1993 by concerts at the theater.

“They’re being pigs, groveling in the trough of noise,” Richard Spix, attorney for the residents, said of the fairgrounds. “The fair was there first and we’ll give them the seven to 10 days a summer. But this stuff pounding it out every weekend is certainly not a good use. It was called a bedroom community for a good reason.”

In part because of a lawsuit at the time in which residents were suing Nederlander over the noise, Nederlander sold the amphitheater to the fairgrounds with the sound restrictions written into the agreement. The fairgrounds later sued the Nederlander group on grounds that the sound requirements were impossible to achieve.

That lawsuit was settled June 8 for $16 million to be paid to the fair, which also gets to keep the theater. But the sound issue was not resolved as part of that settlement.

The sound agreement still awaiting a ruling Tuesday is filled with technicalities. In short, the regulations allow a maximum of 92 decibels (the equivalent of a heavy diesel truck in motion) and 86 decibels (a pneumatic drill) at the back wall--the area closest to homes in Costa Mesa.

Fairgrounds officials want to scrap the mixing board requirement and allow the 86-decibel cap at the wall to remain.

The fair says this will work since the wall area, not the mixing board location, is closest to residents. Eighty-six decibels is also the maximum allowed in the Orange County noise ordinance.

Spix advocates leaving the regulations as they are or setting a limit of 83 decibels at the wall.

After Thomas makes his ruling, the Fair Board of Directors will spend about a year researching and determining the future of the Pacific Amphitheatre, Board President Gary Hayakawa said.

Possibilities include adding a dome, reducing seating so sound does not have to travel as far and limiting the types of acts.

“We just need to come up with a new plan for the fairgrounds and determine what we should do with this issue,” Hayakawa said. “I don’t think the neighborhood should be worried about this, because nothing’s going to happen this year.”

Residents are worried anyway. Concerts once determined whether they slept with windows open or closed or attended Angels games to flee the noise.

“You would hear the boom, boom, boom!” recalled Dennis McNutt, 61, who lives in the area. “Even if the music were pleasant music it would not be enjoyable through your house.”

That was before the fairgrounds owned the theater, however, and officials said for the two seasons the fair operated it, 1994 to 1995, there were no complaints. “The fair is not asking to turn up the volume,” said Becky Bailey Findley, general manager of the fairgrounds. “Unless the mix board restriction is lifted, we can’t even turn it on. Even doming the facility, as some have suggested, would not solve all our issues.

“We still need to be concerned with the traffic and parking issues that also raised complaints with the neighbors when the Nederlanders were operating the facility. And cost is also a major issue.”

Residents don’t want the fairgrounds--located in the middle of a residential section of Costa Mesa--in the concert business at all.

“It’s not supposed to be a money-making thing,” said Norm Snow, who lives near the fairgrounds. “It’s supposed to be there for the enjoyment of the people of the county.”

Resident Jody Van Sandt wants to keep the existing sound regulations. “Why did we go through all that time and effort, just to have the state come along and say ‘We can do what we want?’ ”

John Crean, who sits on the Fair Board, knows what he would like to do with the Pacific Amphitheatre.

“I think it ought to be made into a parking lot,” Crean said. “The minute that thing opens you’ll have so many lawsuits it’ll make your head spin.”

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Sound Advice

How loud is loud? An Orange County Superior Court judge will decide how the volume level will be at the Pacific Amphitheatre on Tuesday. A look at where sound was monitored and some of the loudest performers:

Measuring Loudness

Sound at the amphitheater is the loudest in the front rows, where decibel levels often reach 120--the threshold for pain. To measure decibels outside the facility, monitors were set up on the 45-foot-high wall at the back of the amphitheater and at two neighborhood homes.

Sound Bites

Five of the noisiest performers monitored at the amphitheater during the summers of 1987 and 1988:

Decibel Level

140: Jet takeoff at close range

120: Amplified rock band on stage

80: Vacuum cleaner

60: Conversation

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(Performers):

98: Sting

96: Steve Winwood

96: Huey Lewis

95: Hank Williams Jr.

95: Lynyrd Skynyrd

Source: Orange County Health Care Agency; Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times