How to deal with my house being turned into a disco several times a week!

In My Humble Opinion
1

My husband and I bought a house in downtown Toronto last year - a great house built in 1895, less than a block from the subway - in the center of it all - and around the corner from a bar that was closed for years… until the night before Halloween… Which is when our living nightmare began…

Since this bar opened in October, we have had many nights of loud thumping coming from the bar all through our house. Every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the music starts at about 10 or 11 and goes on until 1 or 2, sometimes 4 am… and we don’t even live that close to this place - we’re about 150 feet away!

When we heard the bar had been sold, we actually looked forward to it being “re-tooled”. We live near the Gay Village, and we thought it would be better for the neighbourhood to have an open bar than an empty building. The bar was reopened as a dance bar…

Unfortunately, instead, we have been left dealing with bar owners who don’t give a damn about the noise they are causing in the neighbourhood. The bar officially opened on October 31st, but the noise started BEFORE they were even officially open - on October 30th, when they had a private party.

We can only imagine what it will be like during the summer, when people will be on their patio drinking and smoking… and the door to the bar open constantly.

The people living even closer than us have it even worse. When one couple complained to one of the owners about the noise, he told them it was their own fault for having French doors on the back of their house!

My husband was told by one of the owners to “sue him” the first time we complained about noise - on the first night the bar opened! On another occasion, one of the owners actually pointed and laughed at my husband asking him to turn down the music.

These guys have no intention of changing anything…

One of the residents who lives directly across from the bar was told by the owner that the city councillor in our area “is a good friend” of the owners. (This when she was complaining about people vomiting all over her sidewalk, and urinating on her house and car.)

According to news articles I found online, the same city councillor supposedly “worked with” the new owners to make sure there were going to be no noise problems - obviously that hasn’t worked… We have tried repeatedly to get information from his office about past and present noise problems with the bar, and have gotten no information… His office never calls back, and when we do reach them, they just sound annoyed that we’re calling.

A quick search on the web finds an interview with this councillor in June, 2007 -
*
“I look forward to it reopening as a dance club,” he says.

“I have been singularly disappointed that the gay community, which has complained about not having enough dance floor space in the area, has not bellied up to the bar… I am so saddened the community is unable to find someone prepared invest in a sure thing.”*

I think this guy has decided that he’ll get more votes from all the queens who go dancing than the people it’s bothering, so he’s written us off…

Many of us have paid a great deal of money for our houses, and will now be faced with either not telling prospective buyers about the noise issue, or telling them and not being able to sell. I’d rather have had a 50 story condo go up than an “historical designated” bar destroying every weekend in our houses.

We’ve been told the only thing we can do is write down the times the bar bothers us and send it in to a noise complaint officer, who may or may not take them to court.

The bar was almost closed down many years ago because of noise complaints, but it turns out that every time a bar in Ontario gets sold, the noise complaints get erased, and a new file gets opened.

We’ve called the police every time it happens - I think they’ve been to the bar at least 25 times since October - and all they do is tell the owners to turn it down… and as soon as they leave, the owners turn the music back up.

We’ve tried to get the newspaper in town interested in covering the issue, but they never responded… We’re not sure what to do any more - I’m tempted to buy a website called “TheBarSucks.com” or “BoycottTheBar.com” and try to get attention that way, but I’m not sure that will actually do anything…

We’re totally out of ideas on how to deal with this… Has anyone dealt with noise issues before? Any (legal) suggestions? Can we as private citizens get a restraining order?

2

Go see your local Citizens’ Advice Bureau or equivalent. And document everything.

3

The owners of the bar CAN play loud dance music AND not annoy the neighbours. It’s just a matter of them paying up for good sound proofing isolation.

We had our ceiling soundproofed when we moved in. We knew the house, and whe knew the ceilings were paper thin. The house dates from 1930, by the way. We could hear the upstairs neighbours’ TV, anything above a whisper, and we knew he could hear us, too. He and we had the same problem. So the upstairs neighbours and we decided to call some specialized soundproofing companies and ask for an estimate in price and reduced decibels. In the end, they soundproofed only our ceiling, although the upstairs neighbour would have been willing to let his floors be done too. We paid 4000 euro’s for 30 square metres, of which the upstairs neughbour paid half.
And I must say, I’m amazed at the result. We absolutely hear no noise from our upstairs neighbour, and he not from us. It was totally worth the money three times over.

Anyway, the soundproofing company said they often have jobs soundproofing dancings or bar-music halls, so the complaints from the people living directly above will stop. And technically, that is perfectly doable. With modern soundproofing, it is possible to sleep quietly above a booming disco.

The sound through windows is another matter, of course. But the soundproofing would help against the noise you her during winter.

So my advice would be to ask the opinion of a soundproofing company, and include that in your public complaints. Makes for great PR, and makes the bar owners look cheap and antisocial. Just compare: “This gay bar annoys me and lessens the value of our homes” to “We all love the fact that there’s a gay bar in town, but we can’t sit quietly in our homes anymore because the bar owners refusal to pay 15.000 dollars for decent sound proofing”

4

Seconding the document everything advice. Have your neighbor take video footage of the vomit, and maybe see if she can discretely videotape them peeing on her property also. Have them keep a log of each thing every day, make sure they give the date for each entry and initial it. (Best thing is to have a notebook set aside for the purpose, and number the pages.) You also should do the same, as to how long the noise lasts each night, what they owners say to you etc. Aren’t there devices that measure decibels that the average citizen can acquire? If so, get one and note down the decibel level each night at midnight. This evidence can be used to prove what pests they are and how detrimental the noise and filth is to the neighborhood. Good luck, I hope you get the problem resolved in favor of the best interest of the neighborhood, and not the greedy inconsiderate jerks’ pocketbooks!

5

The amazing thing about the noise, is that the city has bylaws that say noise or vibrations “are not allowed to leave the building”… So they really are breaking bylaws… but the city doesn’t seem to enforce them…

Trying to force them into soundproofing might be a good idea… Just need to figure out how to actually get anyone to pay attention…

And, yes, we’ve documented every time we’ve been annoyed so far, every call to the police, every time someone vomits on the neighbor’s lawn, etc… We’ve been trying to find some kind of device to measure noise, but the cheapest we’ve found so far is thousands of dollars…

Thanks for the ideas…

6

Pool funds to get a “communal” device? I think all of you would agree parting with a portion of the cost would be preferable to the sickness not getting any sleep and the nuisance the pests are causing, right? :wink:

7

One of the things I’ve noticed about people in this neighborhood… (city? country?) is that they are just so polite… No matter how bothered they are, they have this belief that if they keep talking to the politician, eventually he’ll listen.

So even though they all complain about the noise, and its effect, they don’t want to complain too loudly… When hubby and I show up and start saying we need to ratchet up the complaining, or information gathering, they just all sort of roll their eyes, like “Those damn new loud Americans again!”

I think there’s some culture shock mixed in with all of this…

We actually even have a neighborhood association, who we’ve communicated with several times to try to make them understand that when our house value drops because of this bar, then **theirs **will too… But they just keep talking about meetings and things taking time… Getting them to chip in on a device would be like pulling teeth…

I may be dead and buried by the time anyone here does anything!

8

The city can’t selectively uphold the bylaws, right? So give all the neighbors airhorns.

9

Hehehe… I know what would happen - we’d end up getting arrested… It seems there is one rule for citizens and another for businesses…

But I would LOVE to stand outside the bar with airhorns all night…

10

Here’s an SPL meter for a few bucks: http://cgi.ebay.com/Radio-Shack-Analog-Sound-Pressure-Level-SPL-Meter-NIB_W0QQitemZ280186487711QQihZ018QQcategoryZ25423QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I would say keep calling the police, until they do something about it.

11

Hey, that Sound Pressure Meter seems pretty cool… The only ones I’d found up until now were thousands of dollars…

And the police are becoming our best friends… I don’t even need their non-emergency number saved in my phone - I’ve memorized it…

12

Keep calling the police, and not just the regular #, call a Captain or something. Get others to call. Write to local politicos.

13

Daffyd, I’m afraid I don’t have any advice to offer, but I did want to commend you and your husband for handling this situation in such a methodical and level-headed fashion. Loud noise when I’m trying to enjoy a quiet evening at home is one of my biggest pet peeves. When that noise is dance club music, it ratchets the annoyance factor up tenfold. I know I’d be a livid, red-faced, sputtering nuclear meltdown of a human being in your situation!

If you don’t mind, please keep us updated on how everything goes down. The bar owners sound like tremendous assholes from your description, and I’ll get such a vicarious thrill when I get to hear about the little guys who were wronged and laughed at turning the screws on them! :cool:

14

You have my sympathies. Living close to a club isn’t fun.

Getting them to be quiet is possible, but requires some work.

In addition to what you are doing, I’ve got a few more ideas. Some of them take some money, for which you will want to see if you can enlist others in your campaign, as well as annoying the officials, which will require help from others.

How many residents are in the area? How many are willing to help a lot, some, or at least a little?

They might want to consider the possibility that if you don’t succeed in quieting this club, then other clubs may decide to move in, and then there goes the neighborhood, as it were.

  1. Stop talking directly to the club. It’s counter productive and will only piss you off more.

  2. Organize “zero tolerance” nights. Wait until about 10:30 and then someone calls the police about the noise. Have four or five other people also call. (or a couple of dozen, if you can get that many.) The police will come and they’ll turn down the music for a few minutes until the police leave then will start over.

Another four or five people (or twenty) need to call now and complain. The police will have to come if they’re new complaints and there are enough of them. The police will come and they’ll turn down the music for a few minutes until the police leave then will start over.

You guys start over.

This doesn’t have to be done every night, but do it on their busy nights, which will annoy the police, and eventually the police will start making waves within the city government.

  1. Hire some off duty cops to be the neighborhood security. My WAG is that it would cost $20/hr (US, so a little less there) and if they work from 10:30 pm until 2:30 am, you’re only talking $80 per officer. If you’ve got 40 people chipping in, then it’s only $2 per officer per resident.

Depending on how much people are willing to contribute you could have one officer come a couple of times a month to several officers two or three times a week.

The officers implement a “zero tolerance” for any kind of law breaking. Illegal parking, pissing on cars, public intoxication and, of course, noise.

The great thing about hiring cops for security is that they can get back up really fast from their friends on the force.

If the bar patrons know that they stand a chance of getting arrested, the popularity of the bar is going to drop off really quickly.

4 If the city councilor is being obstructive, he or she needs to know that it can cost them their job and see if that makes a difference.

When was the last election and how close was it? Is the opponent interested in championing your cause to win the next election?

If the oppponent is out working on getting the problem solved, my bet is that the councilor is going to switch sides on the issue really, really quick.

Good luck.

15

Rather than buy a sound level meter, you might want to consider hiring an industrial audiologist (or simlar) person to complete a proper noise survey. To simly point a SLM at a noise source to make a measure would likely not hold up in court.

For noise in the nightime, there is a 10 dB correction factor. Also, depending on the time of year (temperature and humidity) sound can travel differently. It is possible to obtain documentation for the time period you are interested in so that the overall sound pressure level, the frequency band (octave analysis), and the peak sound pressure levels are included.

This is why the professional sound level meters are so expensive as they have advanced features and can download the information into a computer for analysis. The simple sound level meter would let you gain a static number without factoring in the intensity/time aspect. Also, there are various weighting measures that must be considered.

Hire a professional and build a solid case. Get the neighbors to sign a petition and then take it all to court. The professional you hire could also serve as an expert witness.

Good luck!!

16

Move. Seriously. Anything else will simply be a waste of your effort. Don’t waste your money going after the bar for an environmental tort, for although it is possible that you may succeed (no guarantee in that), it will cost you a lot of money even if you also win a costs award and if the bar has the funds to pay the judgment. Don’t waste your time trying to have the municipality shut it down, for it another will re-open there.

So move.

17

Lodge formal complaints with your police department. Make video recordings of the noise level. Take pictures of the mess. Write a letter to your local legislator and implore him to take action. And be prepared to hire an attorney who will sue for the loss of your enjoyment of your property.

Sometimes just getting a letter from an attorney will shake people up enough to stop because they don’t want to have to hire their own attorney to fight it.

18

Could contacting other councilors help? Carbon-copy the mayor while you’re at it. Make sure to state explicitly that you have tried to communicate with your councilor and have received no response, but you would like to discuss solutions to this problem. Make sure your councilor gets a copy of this, too. It might scare him into doing something.

I second the suggestion to hire a professional to track the sound levels; it will be much more meaningful if this ends up in court, and will give you an accurate understanding of exactly in what ways the bars are violating the by-laws. You can then make a better argument about having them soundproof or be shut down.

I like the zero-tolerance nights. Get the whole neighbourhood in on it, and call the cops from different numbers until the bar owners at least start to get tickets. Do it again the next night, or the next week. It might start to have an effect.

The newspapers might not be interested, but you might want to send in a letter-to-the-editor. It might get published, and someone might act on it.

Perhaps talking to a lawyer would be in order? Many have a free consultation. If you bring in as much documentation and evidence as possible, you might have a better sense of what you can do to stop it.

Good luck!

19

The problem is you could spend a lot of your money on lawyers and court fees and you could still lose the battle. Don’t you have a town council that you can show up to on their weekly meetings and insist on being heard? I’d show up every week with recordings, affidavits, signaturtes and a bunch of other collateral material until they finally do something.

The problem is, the bar owners are probably making a lot of money with their new bar, and will put up quite a stink if the neighborhood tries to have them shut down.

Having an ordinance to make them turn it down will only insight them to ramp it up once the proceedings are over. [maybe]

I feel terrible, as a guy who likes his privacy I would be mortified if this happend to me and my wife. That is why we live in an area with no bars anywhere near us, just the sound the ocean…

20

As someone who has been trying to get the neighbors to STFU for the past 10 years, I second Muffin: move.