News

Though T's is gone, noise probe still on

By Bill Moss, Published: October 25, 2012

When Hendersonville City Council members meet at a downtown condo tonight to hear what nightclub noise sounds like, they will have to make their own.

The source of the noise complaint, T's Blue Note Grill, has closed. A new restaurant is moving into the two-story space, the property agent and owner told the Hendersonville Lightning on Thursday.
"It's been leased but I'm not at liberty to say" who the new tenant is, said Joan Whitmore, the real estate agent who handles the property for owner Stuart Rubin. "There is another restaurant going in."
Will the new tenant play music? "I have no idea," Rubin said. The tenant could use the upstairs, which is the part that adjoins a residential condo. "I rented the whole building to them."
Gus Campano and his wife, Lisa, have told the City Council during two public meetings that the sound level from jazz and R&B bands at T's Blue Note next door made living intolerable. The council set a meeting for 5:30 tonight to play music at the legally permitted volume and hear how loud it sounds through the wall at the Campanos' living quarters. The council had planned all along to bring a device to play music and simulate the nightclub sound.
"That doesn't make any difference to me," Councilman Steve Caraker said of the fact that T's had closed. "You folks in the media have been portraying this as us going after T's because we didn't like T or didn't like the music that he played. I am interested in seeing that both things be able to co-exist."
The Campanos were not the only ones to complain. Agents who rent downtown residences as vacation condos say loud music late at night makes the upstairs Main Street space unrentable.
Caraker has led the charge to persuade his fellow council members to force clubs to turn down the volume, soundproof common walls or stop playing music late at night. It doesn't matter that T's is gone, he said, because "it's going to happen again." He had said he "heard on the street yesterday" that the new tenant is a barbecue restaurant that plans to feature bluegrass music a couple of nights a week.
"It goes both ways," he said. "If the residence has a teenager that plays a drum set late at night they should soundproof their side of the wall, too."
From Caraker's viewpoint, it's irrelevant whether the sound is bluegrass, rhythm and blues or Greta Van Susteren.
"I don't care whether it's a loud TV, a live band or Fox news," he said. "I think somebody making a significant investment in downtown property deserves some kind of assurance that their property is usable."