The Champlain Valley Exposition is seeking an additional 15 sound waivers each year so it can host more concerts at its Essex Junction facility. The extra revenue from the events, the organization says, would allow it to upgrade its aging infrastructure, which hosts the biggest fair in Vermont over 10 days at the end of August each summer.
The issue of nighttime noise is a perennial concern in the city. To explain its plans to the public, the Expo hosted a community forum on June 18. The Essex Junction City Council is expected to consider the request at its meeting on Wednesday, June 26.
City ordinance requires commercial properties to produce no more than 65 decibels of noise before 10 p.m. and 60 decibels between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. (There are some exceptions for “instantaneous” noises.). A waiver allows for up to 78 decibels, with some exceptions for five-minute periods that can go slightly higher.
Each year, the town gives the fairground 20 sound waivers, though the Expo doesn’t always use them all. Ten are set aside for the Champlain Valley Fair. Another one will be used in September, when the venue hosts
Noah Kahan for a recently announced benefit show.
The Expo’s executive director, Tim Shea, told the small crowd at the public session this week that the organization has never exceeded maximum allowable sound levels during his 12-year tenure. During events, the facility pays Vermont Air Testing Services to use sensors on the borders of its property to detect the levels. Shea said they try to end all events by 10:30 p.m.
“There's a financial penalty … so something we take very, very seriously is monitoring the sound and staying within the limits of the waiver,” he said.
The noise is enough to bother Chris Chiquoine, who was among about 20 people at the community forum earlier this week.
“I think the current setup, though I'm certainly not thrilled about it, is working, more or less,” said Chiquoine, who has lived in the city for more than 40 years. “Add 15 more events, that’s 15 more days of the summer that I can’t have dinner out on my porch.”
Others in attendance were in favor of the additional events.
“I can hear the fairgrounds from my house, and it doesn't bother me,” Rev Baker told
Seven Days. “If it's a genre of music that I don't particularly like, it doesn't bother me because I'm glad to know that people in my community are out having fun and doing something joyful and rewarding.”
“If you've got the ability to bring in a wide range of different types of art and artists, you're going to have a lot of new diversity coming up into this area,” said Ryan Chaffin, an Essex Town resident. “With more diversity in the entertainment, you would also see more diversity within humans coming and enjoying this really cool part of the state.”
Shea pitched the additional concerts as a financial boon to the community. He cited a study that found every concert ticket sold leads consumers to spend $12 in nearby towns, and he projects that the venue will produce an additional $598,700 in local options tax revenue over the next 10 years. Right now, the fairgrounds creates an estimated $48,950 in local options tax revenue each year.
“The city has quite the robust capital improvement plan and many needs, so that the revenue received from [the Expo] goes a long way to help with those capital projects,” Essex Junction city manager Regina Mahony said.
The Expo is a nonprofit, and its 990 tax forms show it made a profit of $498,891 in 2022, some of which came from COVID-19 relief funds. But Shea says the facility just broke even in 2023, and it projects to operate at a loss this year.
Shea attributes the declining profit to increased expenses. In 2022, he said, necessary repairs to the facility were more expensive than expected, and this year the hourly wages for police services during the fair increased from $70 per hour to $95, costing an additional $35,000.
As expenses rise and profits decrease, Shea says the venue needs new sources of revenue to continue to support events that make less money, such as blood drives, job fairs and graduation ceremonies.
“The special events that we host subsidize the community events,” Shea said. “The concerts pay the bills.”
The venue also hopes the added revenue will allow it to make important upgrades to the facility. It estimates it will cost $1.5 million to make its 33 acres of impervious surfaces compliant with new government regulations, and it plans to revitalize the grandstand, which was built in 1966 and will cost at least $1 million to upgrade.
The Expo currently hosts concerts on its 5,000-person-capacity midway lawn. After improving the grandstand, Shea says capacity for concerts and shows could increase to 11,000 people.
“A lot of people from our area will go to the pavilion in New Hampshire to see shows, and it’s a wonderful facility,” he said. “They’ll go down to Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and it’s a wonderful facility. They come back here, and they’re like, ‘Jeez, how come we can’t have this here?’”
Amber Thibeault, vice president of the Essex Junction City Council, declined to discuss the Expo’s proposal before the June 26 meeting. In recent years, the council has been supportive of the Expo. In 2021, the council unanimously approved the venue’s request for 30 additional sound waivers for just that year to mitigate COVID-19 related financial challenges — though the Expo didn't use any of them. Last December, the council and the Expo renewed their existing sound agreement for 20 annual waivers for another four years.