COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The sound measurements are in from the first three concerts at Ford Amphitheater this year, and city of Colorado Springs staff have determined that none of the performances will result in noise fines.
According to our news partners at The Gazette, the 8,000-seat concert venue created by Colorado Springs-based VENU opened late last year on the city's far north side and began its first full concert season at the end of April.
The amphitheater received hundreds of noise complaints from residents — some miles away — during the shows in 2024, who said the noise from concerts was ruining their nights.
Ford Amphitheater received a more limited noise hardship permit from the city this year and agreed to build additional sound mitigation walls inside the amphitheater and place three sound monitoring stations outside to track concert noise in residential areas.
City spokeswoman Vanessa Zink said the sound level charts provided by VENU took the majority of last week to interpret. City staff ended up agreeing with VENU's reading that none of the reports showed a violation that would trigger the $500 fine allowed by the agreement for the noise hardship permit.
"VENU is proud to uphold sound mitigation compliance with the city of Colorado Springs and will continue to work with the city and its residents to maintain compliance and be a reliable community partner," VENU spokeswoman Chloe Hoeft said in a statement Tuesday.
The noise agreement for Ford's 2025 season states that two of the three remote monitoring stations added this year have to show a spike in the five-minute average volume at the same time to trigger a fine. The spike has to be more than five decibels louder than the pre-concert background noise at that area.
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Seether and Dwight Yoakem headlined the first three performances between April 30 and May 9. Each of the concerts had one or two instances where a significant noise spike was reported at one monitor. The loudest of the spikes was recorded by the eastern station during the May 9 show, when the noise jumped from 48 decibels to 63 decibels.
None of those instances saw a spike recorded by the other monitors or by the in-stadium data, which the city report said suggested "the influence of extraneous factor, such as sound from a motorcycle, emergency vehicle, etc."
Zink said that according to the agreement, there has to be a spike at the same time from the sound monitors inside the amphitheater to prove that it was related to the concert. The agreement also allows for extenuating circumstances if the wind speed around Polaris Pointe is above five miles an hour at the time.
In addition to VENU's reports, Colorado Springs commissioned a third-party survey for this year's concert season by Hankard Environmental, the sound consulting firm that produced noise studies for the city during the Ford Amphitheater shows last year. The group monitored the Jason Isbell and Seether concerts.
Preliminary results from Hankard released by the city showed a potential spike during the Jason Isbell concert at a different location. The increase was still less than 50 decibels and Zink said the report was not factored into the fine discussion.
"It's another snapshot but the VENU data is more complete when we’re looking at the fine scenario," Zink said.
Ford Hurts Families, an organization created last year to oppose the amphitheater and push for noise reductions, has created its own network of neighborhood noise monitors north of the amphitheater. In a statement Monday, the group said the concert noise pollution continues to "egregiously exceed the city and state noise limits" in ways not captured by the official reports.
"Residents are being forced to live through this in real-time and the City should be striving for near real-time dissemination of documented impacts," Ford Hurts Families said.
The group asked for the full release of third-party sound data from Hankard to help verify the true noise levels. They also asked the city to take other enforcement action based on the noise complaints filed through the GoCOS app and other formats.
Ford Amphitheater is coming off a busy Memorial Day holiday weekend, hosting shows by Leon Bridges on Friday night and The Black Keys on Sunday night.
The Gazette's Brennan Kaufmann contributed to this web story.
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