Opinion: Why we left our dream home in Providence
John Heaney is the former coordinator of the Providence Noise Project’s Commercial Noise Committee, and a newly-arrived resident of Rumford.
My wife and I met in Providence in 2013, bought a house on Federal Hill in the summer of 2014, and were married in the backyard in 2015. Our house needed work, and we spent over $100,000 dollars to turn it into our dream home.
Strangers would literally knock on our door to tell us how much they loved what we had done with it. We enjoyed seven wonderful years there, but despite having each lived in the city for 16 years, we felt compelled to leave in October 2022.
In August 2021, the noise issues we were well-acquainted with as city residents suddenly ramped up to a level that made our living situation intolerable. Music venues in the Valley District started playing outdoor shows that were so loud the sound permeated our home. Residents of South Providence and Fox Point have complained about similar noise levels from entertainment venues for many years − long before any changes precipitated by the pandemic.
This is clearly in violation of multiple city ordinances, which regulate amplified music through entertainment licenses. (In our case, one of the venues never even bothered to apply for one.) The law also restricts licensed sound levels to a 200-foot circumference immediately adjacent to the establishment. Our house was 850 feet away and on the other side of Route 10.
But the noise itself isn’t the reason we felt compelled to move. It’s because the city government actively condones these violations of its own laws, and offers a range of excuses for why the venues (and the administration itself) can ignore them, along with resident objections.
The Providence Board of Licensing (BOL) regulates commercial enterprises in the city − including bars, nightclubs, and restaurants − through its power to grant, suspend, or revoke business and entertainment licenses, based on compliance with various city laws.
The License Board’s powers and duties are defined by both Providence’s Home Rule Charter − which, among other things, allows it to suspend venues’ entertainment licenses “for any reason” that it deems “in the public interest” − and ordinances passed by the City Council. As such, its actions (and, far too often, inaction) effectively represent public policy.
Unfortunately, the Board has a history of allowing licensed entertainment venues to violate city noise ordinances on an ongoing basis, despite legislation that make compliance with sound limits a condition of retaining those licenses. Under the leadership of current BOL chair Dylan Conley, a land-use attorney twice appointed by former Mayor Jorge Elorza, that pattern and practice has continued.
Mr. Conley is on record deriding Providence residents who expect the Board to enforce city noise laws as “NIMBYs” − a term frequently used by the property developers he represents as an attorney who often find certain municipal laws inconvenient to their profit-making ventures.
He has also declared his view that the Board must balance the public interest with that of private businesses, and expressed an intent to “grow the night-time economy” − neither of which are part of its remit under Providence’s charter, or any other city or state ordinance. Rather, Mr. Conley’s BOL appears to implement his personal ideology to the exclusion of city law.
With a new mayor touting renewed focus on Providence’s quality-of-life, the friends and neighbors we sadly left behind may finally be able to rely on the city government to abide by its own laws, consign a well-documented “know a guy” culture to the past, and serve the majority of residents instead of a small group of well-connected venue owners. But achieving those goals will require Mayor Brett Smiley and the City Council finding new leadership for the BOL.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Excess noise forced us to move out of our Providence home | Opinion Column
