January 21, 2007
COME ON FEEL THE NOISE
The New York Times has an extended take on what could be one of the most frustrating business/resident contretemps that can occur in an urban area: noisy bar vs. adjacent tenant. There is almost no resolution that can simultaneously satisfy both parties when a neighbor is bothered by loud music until 4 a.m.
But Heathers is no quiet museum. It is a bar, and it is a bar that plays music, unapologetically, and can accommodate 60 or so chattering patrons.
Ms. Millstone notes that she has taken steps to avoid disturbing local residents. Besides the multiple layers of soundproofing, for example, she has placed about the bar a variety of neat little placards telling patrons to be respectful of the neighbors and not to congregate outside the premises. Also, Heathers employees monitor patrons on the sidewalk to keep them from disturbing the neighbors.
Nevertheless, Ms. Millstone said, she has been forced into battle mode by the local community board and an active minority of residents.
“They want to shut me down,” she said. “I’m a casualty of the blanket opposition to new establishments. It doesn’t matter what you do. First they tried to get my commercial status revoked. I had to hire a zoning lawyer, which cost me $10,000 and left me broke. Now they’d like to take away my liquor license.”
Irritable neighbors can become severe pests for a bar owner and with the power of the municipal government behind them, can wind up costing a small business owner everything he or she owns as well as years of hard work. This can occur no matter how assiduously a bar owner works to avoid friction. Last year I had a conversation with a bar owner on 5th Ave. in Brooklyn. Despite operating a rather low-key establishment, he began receiving complaints from a new tenant almost immediately after she moved in and later started threatening to call the police. This was after the owner of the building attempted to belabor the fact that she was moving into an apartment above a bar and stressed that noise could be a concern. He even insisted that she visit the apartment after 10 p.m. to get a true sense of what the noise level would be like. His best efforts went unheeded though.
From a tenant's perspective, noise from a bar can be maddening. For a person working an 8am-5pm job, music that starts to elevate around 10 p.m. and remains loud until 4 a.m. 6-7 nights a week can be an exquisite torture. For one thing, no amount of soundproofing will solve the problem. Even if the noise is reduced to a very reasonable 50-60 decibels of ambient noise in your apartment, that is like having a group of people having an incessant conversation in hushed tones in the corner of your bedroom while you are trying to fall asleep. It may be within legal limits, but it is still a problem. And then there's the vibration. This is something that won't show up on a noise-meter, but the bass from a bar's music system will make your floor vibrate, enough so that you will feel it in your backside while sitting in a chair watching tv. If that sounds like something that might bother you, it most certainly will.
So what to do? I have advice for both parties. If one is a prospective tenant lookng to rent an apartment directly above a bar, my #1 piece of advice is don't do it. Look elsewhere. If the music doesn't get you it will be the occasional screaming match out on the sidewalk or people just getting carried away late at night. If you're a woman, do you really want to come home late at night to always have at least one or two inebriated guys standing right outside the door to your building? Let's say that you already live in an apartment and the business downstairs turns from a hat store into a bar called The Hat Store. Get in touch with the owner of the bar as soon as possible. Steps to ameliorate sound, like installing insulating panels or deciding on where to place speakers, are best taken while the space is being renovated. Build some rapport with the owner early, and any complaints should be received better down the road. Like I mentioned before, however, the sound will not go away. If you find it completely intolerable, go ahead and move. Forcing a bar owner to imperil a business he or she probably just sank more than $1 million into is going to be a Sisyphean task and I believe neighbors have been murdered for less. If you really want to stay and hope the bar eventually goes under--and take heart, most do--invest in one of those ambient noise makers. Crashing waves or a burbling brook can effectively minimize the disruption of incessant music. It will be never-ending noise, but it will be your repetitive controllable noise. And remember, repeated calls to 311 to complain about noise violations are not just hurting a profiteering bar owner or deep-pocketed investor. Repeated calls can result in week-long shutdowns of an establishment. For the bartenders, waitresses, and barbacks who work at a bar, a 25% reduction in monthly wages often means the difference between paying their own rent or not. For this reason, a polite call down to the bar may have you talking to the person most receptive to your plight.
Prospective bar owners: I would suggest the best course of action is finding a property where the apartment or apartments directly above your bar are vacant or make a deal to get them vacant. As a new bar owner, you will be spending approximately 20 hours a day keeping an eye on your business. Furnish the apartment; put in some desks and a safe for your cash on hand, along with a comfortable couch. Use it as an office as well as a place to crash when the hours start to get to you. If you have no use for an upstairs office but can or do control the apartment upstairs, rent it out to a young person who preferably is a struggling artist or actor. He or she will probably be working in the hospitality industry as well and keep less-regular hours. They'll also be generally low on the income totem pole, so offer them a not-insignificant break on the rent with the clear understanding that complaints about the noise will not be tolerated. This can work if the bar doesn't control the apartment either. Ask the landlord if you can subsidize whoever is renting the apartment in exchange for a pliable neighbor with a tolerance for bar noise. People will put up with almost anything for a cheap apartment in NYC and if your bar is doing well, a few hundred dollars a month will seem like a small price to pay to hedge your investment. If your bar isn't doing well, you might want to think about selling it quickly to someone else and recouping some of your investment.
So that's my advice as someone who's slept in apartments above bars many many nights and listened to owners complain about impossible-to-please neighbors when their livelihood and life savings are on the line. It's a problem best avoided by keeping the two parties far apart in the first place, but sometimes a tolerable compromise can be worked out.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at January 21, 2007 1:04 PM
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