Royal City Swing, a group that attracts more than 100 people to the Sapperton Old Age Pensioners Hall for weekly swing dances, says it will have to call it quits if the events are forced to shut down two hours earlier.
The group got a notice Wednesday from the owners of the hall, the Sapperton Old Age Pensioners Association, ordering all renters to vacate the venue and parking lot by 10:30 p.m. instead of midnight – the time the dances have run till for the last five years.
“We would have to close,” said co-founder Kyle MacDonald. “People pay $10 to dance. They’re regular working people. They can’t show up at five o’clock; 7:30 is pushing it for a lot of people. A lot of people can’t even show up until 9. They’re not going to pay $10 for one hour of dancing.”
The association letter cites a City of New Westminster noise bylaw.
Kim Deighton, acting manager of licensing and integrated services at city hall, said the city started getting noise complaints about the dances in August 2015, which resurfaced in May.
“I can tell you there’s been several, regularly coming in,” she told the Record. “The numbers to me are a little bit not relevant to the discussion because in various people’s minds there’s different numbers that make it serious versus frivolous. …The real issue is we have to strike a balance between the needs of the residents and the need of the dancers and the needs of the hall, and I think that’s an easy balance to strike with a few tweaks.”
After a barrage of emails from distraught swing dancers this week, the Sapperton Old Age Pensioners Association has temporarily backed off its original hardline order that the dances be shut down by 10 p.m.
“I think we’ve realized how what we do at the hall affects them,” said association director Bev Bentham. “We’ve appreciated their comments, but we’ve also told them that we’re getting pressure from the city and we have to make sure that the noise is controlled after 10.”
She said directors of the association were scheduled to meet with dance organizers Friday afternoon to find ways to control noise and keep the dances running to midnight.
Some suggestions included closing the doors after 10 p.m. and restricting which outside doors people use to get in and out of the hall after that time.
Swing dancing behind closed doors in the summer would be a stuffy affair, however, given the lack of air conditioning in the hall.
“We’ve been thinking about doing something about (air conditioning),” Bentham said, “but we haven’t got to that point yet because we need to apply for grants to have the work done at the hall.”
Deighton is confident the pensioners association and Royal City Swing will find a way to stop the noise, but if they don’t, the city will have to step in, she said.
“If they continue to be disruptive and we continue to get complaints, then we’d have to look at other enforcement actions,” she said.
Check for updates to this story next week.
