Residents blast back at casino’s concerts
July 21, 2010
By Dan Catchpole
e Snoqualmie residents protest Snoqualmie Casino’s outdoor concert series, which they say is too loud. By Dan Catchpol
A handful of Snoqualmie residents protested the July 15 show of Snoqualmie Casino’s summer concert series. While Peter Frampton and Yes played on an outdoor stage overlooking the 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 in, asking them to boycott the casino.
The garbled bass from the shows aggravates those who live nearby, the protestors said.
“You can’t sit in the yard and relax,” Kit McCormick said. “It’s as though someone is blasting a stereo with just the bass in your yard.”
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.
Contributed by Snoqualmie Casino
“We moved here to listen to the wind whistle through the trees, the pileated woodpeckers and red-nape sapsuckers,” Eiffert said.
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, said Jason Weatherholtz, who lives on Indian Hill.
Since the story of the noise became public last week, ticket sales have increased, said Mike Gallagher, the casino’s vice president of marketing.
Concertgoers had mixed reactions to the protest.
“If I lived next door, I might be protesting, too,” said 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 setup.
By Dan Catchpole
Fred Dandrea, of Tacoma, was less sympathetic.
“The neighbors can always move,” he said.
The casino will re-evaluate its speaker configuration at the end of the year, and it will take a decibel reading in anyone’s yard upon request, Gallagher said.
“We’re going to take a look at the end of the summer from a business perspective,” he said. “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 said.
At McCormick’s and Eiffert’s house on Indian Hill during the July 15 show, it sounded like any other summer night in the Snoqualmie Valley.
“It’s weird that you can’t hear it,” Lucas Eiffert, the couple’s son, said. “Usually you have to have the TV on” to drown it out.
Dan Catchpole: 392-6434, ext. 246, or editor@snovalleystar.com. Comment at www.snovalleystar.com
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