By STEVEN LEMONGELLO Staff Writer
Press of Atlantic City
Atlantic City may not be turning out the lights just yet, but it may ask to turn down the music.
The bass-pounding beach bars on the Atlantic City Boardwalk may need to get quieter if a bill stripping them of state anti-noise law exemptions is signed by the governor.
But while bar owners are crying foul, state Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, who co-sponsored the bill, said the bill would only return noise regulation to where it was in 2011, before the creation of the Tourism District.
“There are people who live along the Boardwalk,” Whelan said. “No one’s saying we’re not having beach bars, no one’s saying there’s not going to be music at the beach bars or that they’d have to shut down at 9 or 10. We’re saying there should be a reasonable standard here.”
The bill is due in part to complaints coming from The Ritz condominiums on the Boardwalk, one side of which faces the Bungalow Lounge beach bar and the Bar A beach bar at Trump Plaza. Several residents of the building — once famously home to notorious city boss and party animal Nucky Johnson — have told Whelan the noise from the beach bars gets much too loud at night.
Joe Fredericks, a Ritz resident, said noise levels are “terrible” and that people are moving because of them.
“This is a residence, not a casino,” said resident Loretta Kolioutas when asked if noise should be expected at the Boardwalk. “Put it in front of a casino, it would be fine. This is like our front porch, and we can’t sit here at night.”
However, Nicholas Dounoulis, the owner of Bungalow, is critical of a law that he says would affect his ability to draw in tourists in the heart of the Tourism District.
“It’s very wrong for a small business trying to survive,” Dounoulis said. “This is a tourist attraction, a tourist destination. … I think Sen. Whelan should rethink this.”
The bill, which is identical to a bill introduced by Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, D-Atlantic, passed the state Senate on Thursday and has now gone to the governor for his signature. The Governor’s Office did not return an email asking for comment. If signed, the bill would remove the exemption Atlantic City beach bars received from local noise regulations and place them under city noise rules.
Whelan was one of the original sponsors of a 2011 law that exempted all beach bars in the state that opened before September 2011 from the Noise Control Act of 1971. Whelan also co-sponsored a 2012 bill that specifically allowed Atlantic City beach bars that opened after that date to still be exempt from state anti-noise laws.
Whelan said that those bills were created because then-Mayor Lorenzo Langford “made it clear he wasn’t interested” in noise regulations in the Tourism District, so the plan was to exempt beach bars from the Noise Control Act, which mandates municipal enforcement, and then shift noise regulation to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.
But casinos objected to the second part of the plan, Whelan said, and noise regulation was never shifted to the CRDA.
“It was supposed to be a two-step process, and we kind of dropped the ball on the second step,” Whelan said. “The first step was to more or less exempt beach bars from regulation by the city, because Mayor Langford said the city wasn’t going to do it. But the second step never got done. … Casinos objected with the absurd argument that they should be unregulated.”
Whelan said that he has heard complaints from not only The Ritz but the Ocean Club condominiums farther down the Boardwalk and residents near the beach at New Hampshire Avenue near Revel.
“That’s a beach people go for tranquility, and I’ve heard people say Revel is knocking the sand out of the beach (with noise from HQ nightclub),” Whelan said. People going to a beach by a beach bar can expect some noise, he said. “But four blocks away?”
Whelan said that under an agreement, the CRDA would purchase sound-measuring equipment but the city would then be in charge of using it for enforcement.
In a statement, Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian said that “Having noise control back under the city’s purview is a good thing.”
“Atlantic City is demonstrating we can regulate our own issues,” Guardian said. “As mayor of a tourism town, I know the importance of working together with businesses to find common sense solutions to any potential issues that may arise. By having these responsibilities returned to the city, we will have that flexibility.”
Besides Bungalow, which is not connected to a casino, other outdoor beach bars on public beaches in Atlantic City include Bar A at Trump Plaza, Landshark Grill at Resorts and Bally’s Bikini Beach Bar. HQ at Revel is located outside on the land side of the Boardwalk.
Bungalow owner Nicholas Dounoulis said that the music at his beach bar has been lowered in past months. But he is worried the music might be forced to be lowered “to the point where it couldn’t even be heard from the Boardwalk. We’re losing casinos, and Sen. Whelan is not doing anything to help small business.”
What Ritz residents don’t understand, he said, “is that if we go out of business because we can’t compete for the Boardwalk trade and we’re forced to close, all the taxes for all residents of Atlantic City will go up. … We’ve cooperated with the new city administration, who are very professional and very pro-business. (But) the bottom line is this: Atlantic City is a tourist destination, and it needs to be revived, not creating new limitations for new businesses.”
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