Rift over outdoor music grows on Nautical Mile

In Freeport Village, revelers celebrate summer nights with seafood, cocktails and live music along the Nautical Mile, a street lined with bars and restaurants on a strip of land that juts out into the Woodcleft Canal.

Across the canal, rock rhythms and reggae beats spill into Robert Taylor's waterfront home all summer - wrecking his summertime quality of life, he said.

"I can't hear what the person is saying on the phone in my own living room unless all the doors are closed," said Taylor, 62. "I can't have people here in the evening. It's too loud."

The Mile, once filled with fish markets and marine businesses, has transformed over the years into a haven for nightlife, drawing visitors from all over Long Island and New York City.

But as a growing number of local business owners expand outdoor entertainment, complaints from neighborhood residents about noise have reached a fever pitch. Some, like Taylor, want the village to ban outdoor music altogether, while others have urged elected officials to lower noise limits and step up enforcement efforts.

Business owners said they're trying to police themselves by investing in noise meters and soundproofing. But, with the high season spanning only four months, merchants said, they need the boost in clientele that outdoor music brings to carry them through year's end.

E.B. Elliot's is spending more than $30,000 to install plastic sound barriers around the exterior bar and stage by the end of this month, said part-owner Michael Danon. "If we lose the music, we lose the business," he said. "We're trying to keep the neighbors happy and the patrons happy all at once."

SEE PHOTOSX-Team: Nautical Mile on Memorial Day Weekend

On a recent night, as the four-man band Frontline played Eric Clapton's "Cocaine" outside JC Cove, patron Bill Misita resorted to gestures to place his order, pointing to the menu and yelling "coconut shrimp!"

Still, Misita, 42, of Massapequa, and his friend Nieve LaRocca, a resident of nearby Arthur Street, agreed that live music added to the Mile's charm.

"I actually like it, when I sit on my porch," said LaRocca, 36. Besides, she said, "it brings a lot of money to the town and it keeps my taxes down."

Trying to balance needs

Village officials, in a bid to balance competing interests, last fall commissioned a study of sound on the Mile. The report noted several instances when levels far exceeded legal limits of 85 decibels at businesses and 55 decibels at residential property lines after 6 p.m.

Last month, the village board voted to amend the 1983 noise code to increase penalties and fix language that had made the law difficult to enforce. Fines for violations are as much as $750 for the first offense, $1,000 for the second and $2,000 thereafter.

However, the board - after initially considering a plan to cut the business limit to 65 decibels - left existing noise caps intact. That decision upset both residents who wanted tighter restrictions, and merchants who had pushed the village to lift the nighttime sound limit outside homes from 55 to 65 decibels.

Even if the amended code left many feeling skeptical, increased enforcement may yet yield results, officials said. As a first step, village officials said, they plan to hire a vendor soon to train police and building code enforcement officers to use equipment to measure sound accurately.

"One of the most difficult things is to juggle the rights of residents and business owners," trustee Bill White said at the meeting last month. "The fact that both some business owners and some residents are unhappy with what was proposed . . . maybe gives us a shot that we can work this out."

No side happy with the law

"There's so many other factors that contribute to the ambient noise [that] even without the music, it's still always going to be over 60," said Irwin Krasnow, owner of Landshark, an open-air bar that was ticketed this month for violating the nighttime residential limit. "I can only control so much," said Krasnow, who spent $11,000 this month to install a sound system with tighter controls.

Fred Bellise, who has lived a block west of the Nautical Mile for 32 years, faulted the law for a different reason: the 85-decibel cap doesn't give him relief from the blaring beats.

"The problem is the 85 decibel [limit] in an open area, with music outside over water, is never going to stop residents from hearing that music," said Bellise, 63, who said he has called police some 20 times since last month to complain.

"Woodcleft Canal, I've been here a long time - it was some sleepy little place that was a fishing village," Bellise recalled. "Now, it's become a monster."