Shakopee officials approve hiring firm to study Mystic Lake Amphitheater noise

You've gotta fight, for your right, for silence. The Mystic Lake Amphitheater's first year in Shakopee, Minnesota, brought in 500,000 concertgoers, but the city is also responding to complaints raised by people who found themselves listening to a concert against their will. On Wednesday, the city approved hiring GZA Environmental, to the tune of $130,000, to study the noise generated by the venue, where it travels and what can be done to mitigate it. The city entertained at least four proposals from various companies to conduct the study and found that GZA Environmental's proposal was both the most comprehensive and the cheapest. The study was prompted by concerns raised by people like Heather Chase, who lives miles away from the amphitheater in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. "When you're trying to work the next day, and you're trying to go to bed and you have bass thumping in your bedroom, it's hard to go sleep," Chase told WCCO in September. Shakopee Mayor Matt Lehman said that he expected a few logistical growing pains with a "unique" venue like the Mystic Lake Amphitheater. He said they built the facility with noise in mind, with the concert stage facing away from nearby residential neighborhoods and instead pointing at an industrial business park. Beyond the industrial area, however, Lehman said he's heard from experts who said that the river valley may help sound travel in unexpected ways. According to Live Nation, which runs the venue, production configuration and atmospheric conditions — meaning the weather — can impact sound. The company also notes that artists are meant to maintain an 11 p.m. show curfew. "What we've accomplished in the first year is to capture all this data of where is the sound complaints coming from, where's the sound travelling, what's the weather on that particular day of that complaint, and you can map it so you can start trying to tie some things together to really understand what's happening," Lehman said. The noise isn't an issue for everybody, including Jason Buss. He lives just a stone's throw away from the venue in a neighborhood that is functionally "behind" the stage. He said it's peaceful even when there's a concert. "We are on the west end, and the music goes towards the east end. We don't hear anything," Buss said. The GZA Environmental study would involve installing monitors within the facility and in "outside neighborhoods" that would provide real-time, instantaneous feedback. Jason Moutry, the general manager of the Mystic Lake Amphitheater, provided the following statement to WCCO: "We take our neighbors' concerns seriously and are working with the City to better understand and address sound impacts. We actively monitored sound levels and adjusted speaker placement in our first season, and we'll continue these efforts in 2027." In: Eden Prairie News Bloomington Shakopee News Featured Local Savings