West Stockbridge — A July 10 site visit and sound test of The Foundry by West Stockbridge Planning Board’s hired consultant Herbert L. Singleton Jr., president of Cross Spectrum, may finally offer an answer to a nagging problem for town officials who have repeatedly tried to evaluate the facility’s compliance with its special permit.
The exercise—including Board Chair Dana Bixby, member Andrew Fudge, and alternate member Sarah Thorne—was carried out in conjunction with the entertainment venue’s request to amend its 2023 special permit that employed strict sound-monitoring measures, allowing a maximum of 60 decibels A-weighted, or higher frequency sounds, and 65 decibels C-weighted, or lower frequency sounds, at the property line as measured by extensive equipment provided by The Foundry.
At the site visit, when “Winnebago,” a taped song by The Foundry’s guest band Coral Moons, played, Singleton unofficially found the difference to be 28 decibels from the property line to the inside of the venue, reflecting that the noise inside was at a level of 28 decibels less than at the property line. He said the music indoors was at a level of 98 to 99 decibels producing near or around the maximum level outside allowable by the venue’s special permit.
“The projection is that if we want to make sure we don’t go over the 65 and the 60 [decibels] outside, we would have to be at 93 [-decibels] inside for C [-weighted sound] and 88-decibels [for A-weighted sound],” Foundry proprietor Amy Brentano told The Berkshire Edge following the site visit. “For the record, that’s extraordinarily loud. We have never done that, never.”
She said the venue employs on-site engineers to manage the sound. “If the sound ever got that loud, people would be running out,” Brentano said. Additionally, the monitoring implement used by The Foundry has a color-coded light that shows red if the sound exceeds a set level and yellow when sound is nearing that bar, she said.
“We can reset it if we are moving the [microphone] inside so that the red light comes on if you hit the 93 [-decibels],” Brentano said.
Should the final report reflect Singleton’s verbal analysis provided at the site visit, moving forward, the monitoring microphone previously placed outside of The Foundry would be relocated to inside, about three to four feet above the venue’s technical table to monitor the sound, she said, adding that she anticipates her amended proposal will include setting maximum interior decibel levels that the venue could not exceed without violating its special permit.
But the news isn’t novel to Brentano, who said she already performed this test with her sound engineer and the town’s zoning enforcement officer when the venue first set up the monitoring equipment, recognizing about a 30-decibel differential in sound between its walls “so that we would know, ‘is this going to work.’”
“Can we commit to 60 and 65 [decibels] outside—can we do this and run programming?” she said. “And we’re like, ‘Oh, piece of cake,’ because we will never blare it as loud as we had to get it up [in the test].”
The test
According to a June 10 Cross Spectrum Acoustics Inc. proposal obtained July 11 by The Berkshire Edge among other documents requested in a June 26 Freedom of Information Act filing with the town of West Stockbridge, the test would review the sound-measurement protocol previously proposed by The Foundry, observe the measurements on site, and summarize the observations in a report to the Planning Board. The estimate for those services is $2,875 and payable by The Foundry. That document can be found here.
The scope of the test was further modified in a June 22 email from Bixby to Singleton deleting a requirement that Singleton evaluate soundproofing effects on the venue. That document can be found here.
“Because we monitor sound at the property line with the microphone … we are running into also recording the ambient sound levels which are coming from traffic and wind and anything else that isn’t caused by the music or whatever amplified sound is coming from inside the venue,” Brentano said at the site visit. “Today, we’re trying to make the permit restrictions more easily enforced and more black and white by moving the microphone inside the venue to record the levels inside.”
She said the test is intended to determine “what the levels can reach inside the venue so that they don’t go over what we are allowed to go over outside.”
The test began indoors as planned, with the volume turned up on both “pink noise”—or a lower-pitched sound like rain or the ocean—and the band’s music indoors to determine what decibel levels were produced outdoors from the sound. However, that protocol was abandoned following an inability to maintain a consistent level of sound due to wind and traffic extraneous noises. The sound was then moved outdoors with pink noise and music blasting and monitored, or recorded, indoors to determine the differential of sound coming through the walls of The Foundry.
Singleton stated the pink-noise test results showed a difference of 30 decibels between outside and inside sounds, with 94 decibels inside, as opposed to a 28-decibel difference for the music. Brentano said the venue will use the more stringent standard of a 28-decibel differential “to be on the safe side.”
“I’m glad that we had a third-party sound engineer here who was an expert at doing this and advise us and also just witness it so that it confirms what we already thought,” she said.
At some point after the site visit began, Bixby stated she would not allow any photographs to be taken during the session. During Singleton’s recap, she said she would like for the press to stand behind a specified indoor line.
At the visit and upon request by Bixby, Singleton replied that he could provide a short report by July 15, but a full report would take about a week. The Planning Board is scheduled to continue its hearing on The Foundry’s amendment request at 7 p.m. on July 15.
When contacted by The Berkshire Edge, Mitchell Greenwald, attorney for abutter Truc Nguyen, declined to comment on the proceeding.
In hearings before the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals, Nguyen—the proprietor of a restaurant as well as a resident of the tract across the driveway from The Foundry—alleged the town’s zoning enforcement officer, Brian Duval, consistently erred in determining that no noise violations occurred from The Foundry. Duval has stated that exterior wind and traffic noise was detected on the high-level sound-monitoring system in place at The Foundry’s outdoor property line and found in all but one of the 13 complaints that The Foundry had not violated its special permit.
Originally, Brentano, through her attorney Bill Martin, requested that all sound-monitoring requirements be dropped but later agreed to amend those requirements following Planning Board hearings.
