Toronto venue owners have to deal with tough music-related bylaws

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For Liz Guerrier, all it took was one bad apple. The owner of Dave's On St. Clair used to be thrilled to put on live music three nights a week. It was a chance to add to the midtown strip's cultural offerings – to bring music closer to home. But then someone complained about the noise.

Rather than risk a fine of up to $5,000, she pared down the offerings to a once-weekly open mic night. Even then, she lives in fear of a fine.

"A complaint focuses on the negative instance of one person," Ms. Guerrier says. "What about the 15 people who ask me, 'Why don't you have music any more?' They're not going to call 311 to say Dave's is doing great today. It's balanced in favour of the one possible person who's got a beef."

The City of Toronto is midway through a review of its noise bylaws, and the local music industry has plenty to say about it. Toronto has made a lot of fuss about becoming a music city, but venue owners and concert promoters feel stifled by what they consider Draconian regulations, where even a peep of noise heard from the sidewalk can prompt a potential fine.

City officials have started to hear out their concerns, though it's not yet clear what changes will emerge. But if Toronto really cares about music's economic spinoff, live-music entrepreneurs say, it has to acknowledge the realities that come with the territory: Music makes noise, and its makers shouldn't be punished over idle complaints.

Toronto has a history of music-related NIMBYism that stretches back decades: A 1983 concert by the band Chicago at the Exhibition Place bandshell, for instance, prompted more than 60 complaints to the city from Parkdale residents. Every city struggles to balance residential needs and cultural development, but the struggle has most recently come to a head in Toronto thanks to competing city initiatives.

Since the city introduced the 311 information service in 2009, making it easier for citizens to log their concerns, complaints about loud music to the Municipal Licensing and Standards department have risen 170 per cent. But for the past several years, the city has also tried to brand itself as a centre where music can prosper, in a bid to capture the economic benefits that come with it.

More than two dozen venue owners, concert promoters and other live-music stakeholders showed up to a public consultation at Metro Hall this week to give input and get updates on the noise bylaw review. The session was run by the ML&S department and the Toronto Music Advisory Council – a team of industry and city officials trying to turn music-city talk into action. Moderated by Toronto's new music sector development officer Mike Tanner, the meeting turned into a a forum for a mass airing of grievances over what stakeholders consider inconsistent, lopsided noise regulation and enforcement.

The city says it will give verbal or written warnings on a situation-by-situation basis, depending on the time and context, and if it's a first-time complaint. But the nature and number of complaints that can lead to a violation and conviction is unclear in the noise portion of the municipal code.

As it's written, the noise bylaw effectively expects silence from every Toronto residence and business. While there are stricter rules for certain time periods – after 11 p.m., for instance – noise that "is likely to disturb the quiet, peace, rest, enjoyment, comfort or convenience" of residents is generally prohibited. And as it stands, no loudspeakers can project "noise beyond the lot line of the property," meaning businesses can unknowingly violate the code simply by opening a door or window.

Peter Zarow refurbished Detour Bar in Kensington Market with soundproofing insulation and curtains, only to face numerous complaints from what he said is one lone neighbour. He feels the noise bylaws are structured to unfairly target venues based on location. "You open a door from my bar, you're going to hear every single decibel," he said. "You open a door on King Street, you're hearing nothing because it's getting filtered right into the noise of the street."

Mr. Zarow said he paid a $2,000 fine for noise after the complaints – but there were spinoff problems, too. It cost him an additional $5,000, he said, to have a lawyer make sure the fine wouldn't hinder the future of his provincially administered liquor licence. (The bar is currently under renovations and will soon reopen under a new name.)

It's a common concern among bar and venue owners that the current noise complaint system positions them as guilty until proven innocent, creating, like Ms. Guerrier experienced on St. Clair West, a culture of fear.

Lisa Zbitnew, who owns the Phoenix Concert Theatre on Sherbourne Street, called the regulations "all about warnings and last chances." She also pointed out that other legislation compounds with noise bylaws against their favour – such as the new Ontario patio-smoking bans, which forces dozens or hundreds of chatting people from her venue onto the street during concerts.

Joining a chorus of others, Ms. Zbitnew said the city should recognize the venues that do comply with noise regulations as best they can, rather than focusing on complainer-driven problems.

In an interview after the consultation, ML&S policy director Carleton Grant said the department is considering how to revise the noise bylaw's language to be more understanding of the live music industry's needs. Much of the language is deliberately vague, especially in terms of how complaints are weighted and how investigations, including decibel measurements, are conducted.

"In some ways, we don't want the bylaws to be so prescriptive they don't work," Mr. Grant said, but coming up with more specific language, including around investigations and the nature and number of complaints that lead to an infraction, "is something we need to look at. … Obviously, we need to respond to each complaint, but we want to get a sense of if it's a bigger issue, or if it's an issue where the person who talks the loudest is heard."

The Municipal Standards & Licensing department plans to deliver a report of its recommendations to City Council's Licensing & Standards Committee in October, with feedback from residents and a variety of industries, including music and construction. Making things fair and consistent for industry, Mr. Grant says, is among the review's chief goals.

Bar and venue owners hope that will mean less hassle in running their business. "If we want to look at ourselves as a music city," Ms. Guerrier said at the meeting, "we have to understand that music begins with young people coming in to make music, playing little venues like mine."

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story referred to Liz Guerrier as co-owner of Dave's On St. Clair. In fact, she is the sole owner.