Oaks Expo Center Cancels Concerts After Noise Complaints

ROYERSFORD, PA — The Oaks Expo Center has cancelled concerts through November after noise complaints about a long and blaring concert heard in around Schuylkill and Upper Providence townships on Sunday.

The concert promoter said on Wednesday that concerts at the Philadelphia Expo in Oaks have been cancelled now through November.

A Schuylkill Township drive-in concert event yielded multiple complaints on Sunday as noise blared into the evening, decibels increasing when the headliner took the stage just before 10 p.m.
The musical blast with laser light show went on for nearly five hours, volume climbing until the headliner hit the stage.

Schuylkill Township and Phoenixville police responded to multiple complaints of "loud music around the greater Phoenixville area."

"We have received complaints about this noise before and determined the sound was coming from the drive-in concert venue at the Oaks Expo Center," said Schuylkill Township Police.

One neighbor posted on Facebook that he could hear it from his house in Royersford. Resident for miles around posted on social media that they could hear the noise.

The concert host, unnamed by police, said that the concert started at 6 p.m., and the group brings the noise up gradually throughout the night "so it's not blasting for 5 hours straight."

This gradual increase hits its peak right around 9:45 p.m. when the headliner takes the stage, the man told police.

This isn't the first of this host's concert events to garner complaints. The man told police that last month was the first concert and they were testing the sound system for the events. He said they decided to turn it down because of the number of complaints they received from that concert.

The host also told police a representative from the Philadelphia Expo Center also drives through the local neighborhoods around the venue to check for sound levels in an effort to be respectful of the neighbors.

"I live less than a mile away and after so many hours of it, with it not even being good music, it gets old. Fast.," said another resident on the police department's Facebook page.

One explanation for volume of the weekend's event was weather conditions; air molecules were very close together on Saturday night, meaning that they collide and pass sound a greater distance, according to 6ABC's meteorologist Adam Joseph.