A handful of Snoqualmie residents protested Snoqualmie Casino’s summer concert series Thursday evening. While Peter Frampton and Yes played on an outdoor stage overlooking Snoqualmie Valley, the residents, who say noise from the concert series is a nuisance, blasted air horns, and demonstrated with signs and shouts at the casino’s entrance.
The protestors were targeting concertgoers as they drove into the casino, asking them to boycott the casino.
Snoqualmie Casino says that it carefully monitors its concerts to ensure that they are do not exceed the city’s sound ordinances. The casino doesn’t have to follow the ordinances; it sits on the Snoqualmie Tribe’s reservation, making it sovereign land.
But the casino wants to be a good neighbor, says Mike Gallagher, Snoqualmie Casino’s vice-president of marketing.
To do that, decibel levels are monitored at the show and in Snoqualmie during the show.
The level at the show peaks at 95 decibels, according to Gallagher. Ninety-five decibels is slightly louder than a lawn mower.
On the valley floor, the noise is much quieter, but it is the bass that is the aggravating part, several protestors say.
“You can’t sit in the yard and relax. It’s as though someone is blasting a stereo with just the bass in you yard,” says Kit McCormick.
Like some other protestors, McCormick lives with her husband and son on Indian Hill on the opposite valley wall. She and other Indian Hill residents said on concert nights they can only hear an incessant, throbbing bass in their yards and even inside their homes.
She and her husband, Dave Eiffert, came to the Valley to get away from that kind of noise.
“We moved here to listen to the wind whistle through the trees, the pileated woodpeckers and red-nape sapsuckers,” Eiffert says.
The protestors say they plan to continue demonstrating during the summer outdoor concert series, which runs through Sept. 2, until the casino offers a solution.
Until then, they are targeting the casino’s bottom line by asking people to boycott the shows and the casino, says Jason Weatherholtz, who lives on Indian Hill.
Since the story of the noise became public last week, ticket sales have increased, Gallagher says.
Concertgoers had mixed reactions to the protest.
“If I lived next door, I might be protesting too,” says Donna Padilla, of North Bend, adding that she would have been OK with an indoor venue. It was the second show in the series she has attended.
The casino held seven indoor shows last year, but its largest indoor venue has half the seats as the outdoor set up.
Fred Dandrea, of Tacoma, was less sympathetic. “The neighbors can always move.”
The casino will reevaluate its speaker configuration at the end of the year, and it will take a decibel reading in anyone’s yard upon request, Gallagher says.
“We’re going to take a look at the end of the summer from a business perspective,” he says. “This year is a learning year.”
Jon and Maureen Whitney, who live in downtown Snoqualmie, have learned to dread concert nights. The indistinct, bass-heavy noise drives them and their neighbors inside, they say.
“We don’t want the casino to close, we just want them to work with us,” Jon Whitney says.
But not all residents are bothered by the concerts.
Bruce and Kathy Stevenson sat on their front steps with their two dogs and a couple beers listening to Yes play up above them.
“It’s wonderful. We love it. It’s like having a stereo in my yard,” Bruce Stevenson says.
At McCormick’s and Eiffert’s house on Indian Hill, it sounded like any other summer night in Snoqualmie Valley.
“It’s weird that you can’t hear it,” Lucas Eiffert, the couple’s son, says. “Usually you have to have the TV on” to drown it out.
Dan Catchpole: 392-6434, ext. 246, or editor@snovalleystar.com.
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