HOWELL – The township zoning board will hear a unique application on August 28.
Castle Court resident Marc Parisi lives 191 feet from the back wall of Xscape Theatres on Route 9 and has heard loud rumbling noises in his house every day for the past 15 months. He suspects that the sound, which he said equates to a thunderstorm, is coming from the theatre’s sound system.
Parisi’s concerns were partially heard at a May 8 zoning board meeting, which he attended to appeal a letter from the township’s Director of Land Use that said his noise complaint was not an enforceable code issue.
Also during that meeting, Parisi told officials that he purchased his home in September 2014, before Xscape Theatres was built, but attended two hearings in April 2015 after he found out about it. Parisi said that during those hearings the theatre’s acoustical engineer said that in his opinion, he expected the sound coming from the theatre, if any, would be no louder than the traffic on Route 9.
Parisi first heard the rumbling noise when the Xscape Theatre held a soft opening in April 2016. Two months later, several theatre representatives came into Parisi’s home to observe the noise first hand. He said those representatives advised him they were purchasing materials to fix the problem and were waiting for those materials to be installed.
Nearby resident Richard W. Weynberg, Sr., who lives 400 feet from the theatre, was also at the meeting and said he can hear a rumbling, low frequency sound, even though he has a hearing disability and his home is more in line with the highway than the theatre.
The application was originally set to be heard at the August 14 zoning board meeting, but Parisi said because they will not have a full zoning board, it was pushed to August 28.
