Costa Mesa’s Holiday bar gets city’s OK to host live music
After almost three hours of discussion and debate, Costa Mesa City Council members voted Tuesday night to allow live entertainment at Holiday, a Westside bar and lounge.
The 4-1 vote, with Councilman Jim Righeimer opposed, came despite comments from several nearby residents who said the recorded music already allowed there is creating excessive noise in their neighborhood and making it hard for them and their children to sleep.
Supporters of the speakeasy-style venue at 719 W. 19th St. praised its operators as good neighbors and said adding live music would expand cultural and entertainment offerings in the area.
Holiday is already entitled to have disc jockeys and dancing. The city Planning Commission in September unanimously approved the bar’s request to host live performances, but Mayor Pro Tem Sandy Genis asked the council to review that decision.
“Having places like this could really help with revitalization,” Genis said Tuesday. “The problem is, if we’re not mindful of the neighbors, instead of revitalizing the Westside, what could happen is we could blight it further.”
Much of Tuesday’s discussion centered on the reverberating bass that is part of the music that has been played at Holiday since the bar opened in July.
The bass, some neighbors said, is sometimes so forceful that they can feel it in and around their homes. About 100 people signed petitions urging the council not to permit live music at Holiday, according to city documents.
“We are trying to sleep through what they say does not exist,” said Steven Chan, who lives nearby.
Chan, who has spoken regularly against Holiday’s bid for live music, said Tuesday that the noise has interfered with his family’s ability to get a good night’s rest.
“After five months of this operator, my entire life has been disrupted,” he said.
Chan also has raised an issue with a provision of the property’s license from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control that states, in part, that “any entertainment provided shall not be audible beyond the area under the control of the licensee.”
Chan contends Holiday is violating that provision.
Michael Cho, an attorney for the applicant, said that interpretation is incorrect and that Holiday’s license is in good standing with the ABC.
Holiday’s operators say they’ve already made improvements to the building to reduce possible sound spillage — such as upgrading doors and seals, putting in new insulation and installing a device that will warn employees if it gets too loud.
“We’ve spent a considerable amount of financial resources and time to make sure these things are mitigated and we do not have a negative impact on the community,” said Rob Arellano, one of Holiday’s operating partners. “This is something we do take very seriously.”
Last month, Gary Hardesty, director of Sound Media Fusion LLC, performed a noise study to determine whether the venue could appropriately contain the sound from a live performance.
He determined it could, but he recommended that Holiday further upgrade its rear doors to reduce the chance of sound spillage. Those upgrades are in the works, he said.
On Tuesday, Hardesty told the council that live music is much easier to control than deejay or electronic dance music and that it typically produces considerably less bass noise.
“If it were me, I would approve live music over a deejay any day or night,” Hardesty said.
As part of the city’s approval, Holiday will be required to continue monitoring the sound in and around the venue and take steps to reduce and contain it as necessary.
Council members said they think Holiday’s operators have shown they’re willing to work to address noise issues.
Allowing live music, they said, may end up being a blessing in disguise.
“I do believe that the deejay noise and the type of deejay music that is being played right now is what’s creating problems,” Mayor Katrina Foley said. “And if you get away from the deejay style of music more toward live, acoustic, all those types of instruments, you won’t hear that reverberation that the deejay music causes.”
Foley and Councilman John Stephens said they’ve been to Holiday several times and that ambient noise in the area — either from traffic on 19th Street or the buzzing of a nearby utility line — was more prominent than sound coming from the venue.
The council will review the matter in six months.
“I think what we’ve done tonight, maybe kind of ironically, is by approving live music, we will have alleviated a lot of the problems with the low-frequency bass,” Stephens said. “I’m hoping that’s true.”
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