Night club may close due to complaints from neighbours

Ever since Rick's Café reopened in January 2007, neighbours have been bothered by too high a sound level during nighttime. After a year with penalties from the local authorities, CEO Olaf Arnstad realizes that the future isn't so bright after all.

There has been a big decline in our trade since this became an issue. We can't run all our arrangements as planned, which of course makes us lose money, he says.

Without that there is no use in running a nightclub. When the construction is as wrongly built as it is, there is no basis for keeping it up and running, he says.

He blames poor construction for the high sound level and denies the responsibility for the club's probable demise.

Five million kroner in fees

Rolf Kristiansen, CEO in the neighborhood's joint ownership, has represented the about fifty resident living close to the nightclub. He has sent many complaints to the local authorities about the high sound levels. After the complaints Rick's have received fees on a daily basis. According to Kristiansen the fees combined are as high as five million kroner. He knows very well what has gone wrong.

– Neither the owner nor the contractor knew, or were informed, that the sound level on the first and second floors was going to be 110 decibels (dB), Kristiansen says.

He refers to two reports that both conclude that the sound levels were too high. One of the reports says among other things: «It is questioned if the mentioned sound levels are expected in a café or in a restaurant. (…) At corresponding sound levels in the industry the employer has to make sure that the staff are using desired hearing protection, and that the environment is to be marked as an ear protection zone».

Failed to warn

– 110 dB is the level in a regular nightclub. But when that level is reached inside walls that aren't built for that purpose, it becomes intolerable for those who live nearby, Kristiansen continues. He claims that Olaf Arnstad failed to warn about this on beforehand.

– Arnstad attendet all the meetings, because he then was a co-owner of the building. Those who sold the apartments also attended the project meetings, but Arnstad never said anything about the need to isolate against high dB values. There are actually some rules of maximum dB levels in a bedroom, he says.

– What was done with the cause?

–The local authorities looked into it, and found that everything was built according to the conditions, but that the conditions were wrong, he says.

- The contract management's responsibility

Arnstad rejects Kristiansen's criticism.

– Rolf Kristiansen has no clue as to what has happened, he says.

– That Rick's was going to be run as a night club was something everyone was informed about. It's even to be read in the minutes that the first and second floors were going to be a nightclub.

Arnstad thinks that the whole matter is a construction scandal, and claims that the project management and the constructor have used materials that aren't good enough, instead of making it soundproof, which is a regulations demand.

– We have a nightclub which is just like it was before it burnt down. The building has cost 100 million kroner. One expects that the contract management builds according to the regulations, he says.

Arnstad therefore thinks that the contract management must take the blame.

– The bass from the music runs like a wave through the building, he says.

- Not done anything wrong

– I don't want to take part in a public discussion with Arnstad about this, says project manager Terje Broli in Reinertsen AS, the contracting company used in this particular building process.

– What I can say is that Rick's are allowed to run a nightclub in the basement and café and restaurant on the first and second floors. We have built according to that, and we have documented that we haven't built it wrong, so this case is dismissed, Broli says.

Translation: Maria Kråkmo