Lead server Jeanne Carmichael delivers food to patrons during lunch Monday at the Honest Pint.
Chattanooga City Council plan to allow higher noise limits in certain parts of downtown.Chattanooga’s proposed sound ordinance was supposed to fix – or at least offer a legal solution to – the noise complaints associated with the popular music venue Track 29.
But the city’s new ordinance could have wider implications, determining winners and losers among local music venues or small businesses by virtue of their locations. And some residents say that creating a defined music district so close to neighborhoods could force residents out of the growing urban core even as the city tries to get more people to move downtown.
“I feel like the city is setting up a situation where businesses can succeed and residents will fail,” said Kerrick Johnson, president of the Fort Negley Neighborhood Association, which covers the area from Main to 20th Street. “We’ve worked hard to make this a nice place to live again. But they could potentially kill our neighborhood.”
The City Council is expected to vote on the ordinance tonight, but first council members will offer multiple amendments that could shrink the boundaries of the sound district and lower the bass decibel levels.
The current proposed boundary runs from Fourth Street on Market and Broad streets, crosses partially onto M.L. King Boulevard past JJ’s Bohemia, then down to East Main Street past Track 29 into a residential neighborhood. Within that district, business owners could apply for a permit to play live music or the radio at sound levels heard outside their venue of 80 decibels or bass levels up to 95 decibels on the weekend till midnight or weekdays till 11 p.m.