For years, Loom Hall's biggest neighborhood concern was filling seats on a Tuesday night. Now the Foundry Row music venue is fielding a different kind of attention, as new residents of a nearby apartment development press the city to enforce noise limits against a venue that predates their lease by more than a decade.
Loom Hall owner Marisol Vance said she has run the 900-capacity venue inside a converted Foundry Row textile mill for eleven years without a sustained complaint from neighbors, largely because there were few residential neighbors close enough to notice. That changed two months ago, when the first wave of tenants moved into the 140 completed units of the Foundry District Lofts development roughly two blocks away. Since then, the city’s code enforcement office has logged fourteen separate noise complaints tied to the venue, more than in the previous three years combined.
“I don’t think anyone here is trying to be unreasonable, but I also didn’t move into a converted factory loft expecting bass through my windows until one in the morning three nights a week,” said Grant Whitmore, a Foundry District Lofts resident who filed two of the complaints. “I looked at the unit during the day. Nobody tells you what a concert night actually sounds like from four hundred feet away until you’re living it.”
What the ordinance actually says
Bellwater’s noise ordinance caps sound at 65 decibels measured from a residential property line after 10 p.m. City code enforcement records show measurements taken outside the lofts building on three occasions exceeded that threshold, though only marginally, peaking at 71 decibels during a touring act’s encore. Vance disputes that the readings reflect a typical night. “We host around 120 shows a year, and maybe a dozen of those get loud enough to test any limit,” she said. “They picked their three loudest nights to measure, and I understand why, but that’s not the average Tuesday here.”
Vance said Loom Hall has already spent roughly $40,000 on supplemental soundproofing for the building’s east-facing wall, the side closest to the lofts, since the complaints began, along with adjusting the venue’s outdoor smoking-patio hours to reduce street-level noise after 11 p.m. “We’re not refusing to be good neighbors,” she said. “We’re asking to be treated as a neighbor who was already here, not an intruder into a neighborhood that built itself around us.”
A council district caught in the middle
The dispute lands squarely in City Council Member Luis Bettencourt’s Foundry Row district, which he has represented through much of the neighborhood’s transition from shuttered factories to lofts and biotech offices. Bettencourt said he has heard from both sides and does not see an easy fix. “Loom Hall is exactly the kind of cultural anchor that made people want to live in this neighborhood in the first place,” Bettencourt said. “But I also can’t tell a family paying market rent for a loft that they should just accept whatever noise comes with the territory. Both of those things are true at the same time, and that’s the hard part of representing a district that’s changing this fast.”
Millrace Development Partners, the developer behind the Foundry District Lofts, disclosed the venue’s proximity in leasing materials, according to spokesman Aaron Kessler, though he acknowledged the disclosure was a single line in a longer document most tenants likely skimmed. “It was in the lease packet that a live music venue operates nearby,” Kessler said. “Whether that adequately prepared people for what a sold-out show actually sounds like from their bedroom is a fair question, and one we’re looking at for future phases.”
Not all of the building’s new residents side with their neighbors filing complaints. Priya Deshmukh, who moved into the lofts around the same time as Whitmore, said the venue’s existence was part of the appeal. “I specifically wanted to live somewhere with an actual music scene instead of another beige suburban complex,” Deshmukh said. “If you can’t handle the occasional loud Friday, there are quieter buildings in Riverside Heights.”
City code enforcement officials say they are for now handling the complaints case by case rather than pursuing a citation, giving Vance time to complete additional soundproofing before any formal enforcement action. A spokesperson for the office said a decision on whether further steps are warranted is expected within the next couple of months, once the venue’s fall touring schedule, typically its busiest stretch, has played out.
- Fourteen noise complaints logged against Loom Hall in two months, compared with roughly three per year historically
- Decibel readings during three inspected shows ranged from 61 to 71, against a 65-decibel nighttime limit
- Loom Hall has spent about $40,000 on soundproofing upgrades since the complaints began
Vance said she is planning further renovations, including a second layer of insulation around the loading dock most commonly cited in complaints, but stopped short of committing to any changes to booking or show times. Bettencourt said he expects the issue to resurface at a council committee hearing in the coming weeks, as the neighborhood braces for the venue’s upcoming decade-anniversary celebration, which organizers had already planned as one of its loudest, longest nights of the year before the complaints began piling up.