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Before & after: Carol Karels for CLIFFVIEW PILOT
It’s unclear whether local officials and residents will continue with a plan to attend tomorrow night’s freeholder meeting in Hackensack to complain to complain about the noise, traffic and mess of the Oct. 8-9 K-POP festival now that county officials have come to them.
Jeanne Baratta, chief of staff to County Executive Kathleen Donovan, said officials consider the event successful, in part, because so many youngsters from throughout Bergen attended. There were also some people from Korea and a few from France in the estimated crowd of 75,000, she said.
What was most impressive, she said, was that “there was only one arrest in the park and it wasn’t related to the festival.”
“An event of that magnitude and not one incident,” Baratta said.
That said, she told those gathered that county officials “want to be respectful of residents.”
CLIFFVIEW PILOT HAD THE SCOOP: Leonia officials are planning a bus trip to Wednesday’s Board of Freeholders meeting in Hackensack to complain about the noise, traffic and mess of last weekend’s K-POP festival, CLIFFVIEW PILOT has learned. READ MORE….
Mayor Mary Heveran told Baratta and Acting Parks Director Ron Kistner that the size and scope of the massive festival came as a surprise that turned the town upside-down.
“Two performances of The Player’s Guild, which people had purchased tickets to, were disrupted by the excessive noise,” the mayor said.
However, Baratta noted that the event was discussed at a Sept. 2 meeting called by Kistner that included, among others, Leonia Police Chief Jay Ziegler.
More than three dozen residents turned out Monday night, complaining about excessive noise, traffic and safety violations. County police closed two lanes of Fort Lee Road, a major east-west thoroughfare so pedestrians could cross the four-lane road, they said. Heavily amplified music, speeches and announcements continued unabated from 10 a.m. until after 10 p.m. both days, the residents added.
The K-POP festival was sponsored by the Korean Produce Association of New York and was moved to the Ridgefield Park section of Overpeck County Park because the group couldn’t obtain a permit from New York City this year. The association paid for use of the facility, as well as for the clean-up.
Several of those attending the Mayor and Council meeting insisted that the county establish protocols defining the size and types of events permissible in the park in the future.
“There are two issues,” resident Victor Klig of Park Avenue said. “The first is implication. You have opened the door to any group. There are 14 weeks during the summer.
“How many groups are you going to allow? When does Overpeck Park become Yankee Stadium?”
Councilman Peter Knott echoed the sentiments of others when he said any event should be able to fit into the county’s ampitheater, which he said was built with the intent of shielding the town behind it from the noise by pointing toward
Routes 80 and 95.Organizers of the festival instead assembled a huge portable stage on par with some seen at major concerts. And the speakers were pointed east, across the park’s lake, which sent the sound barreling uphill into residential neighborhoods.directly at Leonia neighborhoods.
Some residents said they could hear the PA system with the windows closed. It alternated between K-POP music and speeches.
“I think there’s no excuse for these huge stages and 80-plus amplifiers with the sound at this level. If you want to put on The Who, they should go to the Meadowlands,” Knott said.
Kistner’s admitted that he allowed the music to continue past 10 that Sunday night – in violation of town noise ordinances — because “the attendees were extremely well-behaved and I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
That didn’t sit well with Councilman John DeSimone.
“People called the county police, the county sheriff, the mayor,” he said. “There should be one go-to guy you can contact, and there was no one.”
More than 200 people have signed a petition asking the county to “not again schedule a noise-generating event of the scale of the New York Korean Fair.” “In addition to the lack of sensitivity in scheduling the event on Yom Kippur, its magnitude was disruptive to the communities surrounding the park,” the petition says.
As first reported earlier on CLIFFVIEW PILOT, Leonia officials had planned a bus trip to tomorrow night’s Board of Freeholders meeting in Hackensack.
“When Leonia and its neighbors donated land to the County for a park in 1950, the intention was to improve the quality of life, not detract from it,” it adds. “We seek recognition from you that the rights and expectations of Leonians will be respected.
Resident Roland Weimer, who attended the event, said people were well-behaved and that the operation was generally well-run. However, he said, the park facilities aren’t sufficent to stage such a large event.
“K-POP is a very popular worldwide phenomenon of Korean and Asian culture, basically teeny bands from Korea, and is very popular,” said Weimer, the Vice-President of the Rotary Club of the Palisades. “It is basically a large crowd of screaming teenagers.
“I honestly don’t think the parks officials had any idea what they were getting into.”
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