Event production
in Hollywood, Florida.

On nonresidential property the limit is 80 dBA or 80 dBC between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and between 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Overnight — from 10:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 11:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, until 7:00 a.m. — it drops to 75 dBA or 75 dBC. On residential property the figures are 65 and 55 for the same two windows, and § 100.03 restates the overnight residential figure as the city's quiet hours.

That extra hour on Friday and Saturday is the whole encore. A show on nonresidential ground in Hollywood has an eighty-decibel ceiling until eleven at the weekend and until ten midweek, and after that it is not over — it is five decibels quieter, which is a different instruction to a front-of-house engineer than a curfew is. Fort Lauderdale eight miles north writes its general rule as an audibility distance with no number attached. Boca Raton writes it as an adjective. Miami Beach declines to publish a cutoff for permitted events at all and writes the hour into each permit instead.

The sharpest comparison is with West Palm Beach, forty miles up the coast, because the hours are the same hours — seven in the morning until ten at night Sunday through Thursday, until eleven on Friday and Saturday. West Palm Beach stops there and hands a production a wall clock. Hollywood attaches a figure to each side of it. Two cities, one schedule, and only one of them can be answered by a sound system design rather than by a running order. Of the seven cities covered on this site, Hollywood's is the only general rule that can be checked with a meter before the event is designed.

A-weighting discounts low frequency; C-weighting does not. That is the entire reason both scales exist, and it is why ordinances that regulate music usually set the C figure above the A figure — typically by some margin, to leave room for the part of a program that a human ear weights down but a wall does not. Hollywood sets them equal. Read literally, the binding constraint on a music system in this city is not the broadband level at all. It is the low end, because on any program with sustained bass content the C-weighted reading is the higher of the two, and the ordinance gives it no extra allowance.

The practical consequence is a design decision, not a compliance afterthought: subwoofer deployment, cardioid or end-fire arrangements that put energy where the meter is not, and a low-end target set from the property line inward rather than from the mix position outward. A system specified to hit a broadband number and then tuned for impact will pass one of these limits and fail the other at the same moment.

§ 100.02(E) adds the clause that decides where the measurement can be taken from, and it is written for exactly this work: "In the case of an elevated or directional sound source, compliance with the sound limits is to be maintained at any elevation at or beyond the real property line." A flown array is an elevated directional source by definition. Hanging the boxes higher to clear a crowd does not move the compliance point; the limit follows the rig up. Of the seven cities covered on this site, this is the only one whose noise code contains a sentence about flown sound.

In connection with a permitted special event the limit applies at or beyond 100 feet from the source where the source is on public property, or at or beyond the real property line where the source is on private property, against the dBA or dBC standard in the chapter applicable to that point and that time — "unless a different standard is established in the special event permit."

Those are two different jobs. A festival on city ground is measured a hundred feet out, which is roughly the distance at which a main hang and its sub array have begun to behave like one source, and it buys back a meaningful amount of level at the mix position. The same show on a private lot is measured at the fence, where the near field of a perimeter stack is still a near field. The site decides which rule applies before anything is drawn, so a site survey in this city is partly a question about property boundaries.

The last clause is the one worth negotiating. The chapter's numbers are the default and the permit can set a different standard, which means the number is an input you can argue about rather than a constant — but only in an application made early enough for anybody to argue about anything, which is section 06 below.

Compliance in progress — ten days. Granted where an applicant is making best efforts to comply, needs more time to modify the activity, and has no reasonable alternative.

Construction — three days, unless the Director authorizes otherwise, and only with all equipment operated to manufacturer's specification, in good repair, using all available noise baffling methods the manufacturer specifies.

Special events — three days. Available where the applicant has already met all of the city's other requirements for the permit and the event still cannot be performed in compliance with §§ 100.02 and 100.04.

A three-day ceiling is a structural fact about what kind of event this city is built for. A weekend festival fits inside it exactly. A five-day build with amplified content on each day of it does not, and the loud days have to be identified in the application rather than discovered on site. The permit also carries its conditions and its own stated period on its face, and § 100.06(D) makes breaching any condition a violation in its own right.

Denial is survivable and the clock is short. § 100.06(F) gives an aggrieved applicant a right of appeal to the City Manager or Assistant City Manager no later than three business days following the denial, by written request. § 100.06(E) also bars a denial based on the content of the proposed sound, and lets the Director offer alternative conditions — a different time, a different location, different levels — instead of a refusal. That is worth knowing before an application goes in, because it means the useful reply to a problem is a counter-proposal and there are three business days to write one.

No person shall, on any public street or sidewalk, park, beach or other public property, or in any motor vehicle on public street or property, operate any device producing or reproducing sound, or a musical instrument, "at a level which interferes with a person's peaceful enjoyment or the peace and tranquility of the surrounding area at a distance more than 30 feet from the sound source."

Thirty feet is less than the depth of a modest downstage monitor position. Taken on its own the section would make an unpermitted amplified performance on the Broadwalk or in a city park effectively impossible, and that is the point of it: the permit route in § 100.06 exists precisely because § 100.04 is written to stop casual amplified sound on public ground rather than to accommodate it. For comparison the published figures elsewhere are 50 feet by day and 25 by night in Fort Lauderdale, and 100 feet in both Miami and Miami Beach — all of them measured from a property line or a building rather than from the loudspeaker.

§ 100.07 then exempts, among other things, fireworks displays, parades and special events holding a valid permit, within the hours and restrictions the permit imposes — and separately exempts activities on publicly owned property and facilities authorized by the authority that owns them, "except where such publicly owned properties are under private operation pursuant to a lease or agreement." A city park run by the city is inside the exemption. The same park handed to an operator under an agreement is outside it, and the permit is back.

§ 102.09(A): any applicant denied a special event permit shall be notified in writing no later than 45 days prior to the proposed date of the special event. § 102.05 sends the application to all affected departments, whose designated reviewers endorse their comments and return them to the Director within ten days from receipt. § 102.06 then has the Director approve or reject, and, on approval, impose in consultation with the affected department heads whatever restrictions or conditions public safety, environmental and administrative considerations require.

§ 102.09(B): an aggrieved applicant is granted a hearing before the City Commission provided the request is made to the Director in writing within five days of receipt of notification, and § 102.10 gives the final determination to the Commission itself. That is a public body with a meeting calendar, not a staff desk, so the realistic cost of a denial is not the five-day letter. It is the gap to the next Commission meeting, and that gap is the reason to be inside the 45-day window with room to spare rather than at the edge of it.

The city's own special event page supplies the missing front end as fee brackets rather than as a rule, and the brackets are the useful part: applications submitted 90 or more days ahead sit in one bracket, and those submitted 45 to 89 days ahead in the next. Read with § 102.09(A) the practical shape is clear enough — at 45 days out the city has run out of time to refuse in writing, which is not the same thing as having approved anything.

An applicant must obtain the applicable permits — electrical, plumbing, mechanical and structural — from the appropriate city department, and may be required to obtain others under state law, city ordinance and the Florida Building Code as in effect in Broward County. The department inspects at the event to confirm Building Code standards are being followed, and noncompliance "may be cause for either the revocation or the partial revocation of the special event permit, and the prohibition of any feature or aspect of the special event."

Partial revocation is a sharper instrument than a shutdown and it changes how a build should be sequenced. A structure that fails inspection does not necessarily end the day; it can end that structure, which is a different and much more likely outcome — the stage roof stays dark, the wall does not go on, the generator is red-tagged and everything else proceeds. Anything on the critical path of the show therefore wants its permit and its inspection closed early rather than on the morning of doors.

§ 102.07(C) is the clause that decides who carries that risk: the permit holder "shall be responsible for ensuring that its contractors and subcontractors obtain all permits and comply with all applicable laws, ordinances and building codes." The city does not chase a subcontractor. It holds the name on the permit, which is usually the client's, which is why a production company working here should be handing over permit numbers rather than reassurances.

Two further consequences sit in the noise chapter and both attach to the venue rather than to the show. § 100.08(A) requires any nonresidential establishment from which amplified musical entertainment emanates, live or recorded, to be equipped with a noise level detection device alerting the occupants of the property to the noise — a hardware obligation on the building, and the only one of its kind across the seven cities here. And § 100.09(F) requires a nonresidential property adjudicated two or more times within a 30-day period for breaching the overnight limit to change its closing hours to 10:00 p.m. for 30 days. A venue's licence to stay open late is downstream of the sound its tenants make, so a visiting production's level discipline is the building's problem too, and the house will know it.

§ 99.02(A)(6) permits open air canopies on the sandy beach with no single side greater than ten feet and no sides enclosed, placed westward of a line parallel to the front edge of the beach towers and lifeguard stands. That is the general permission, and it is a hard ceiling on anything that is not separately permitted: a twenty-foot span, a side wall, or a frame tent is outside it and becomes a structural permit question under § 102.07 rather than a beach rule. Single pole umbrellas are allowed except within the marked exclusion around the beach towers, including a clear path from the tower to the water equal in width to the markers — which is, in effect, a published emergency access lane that no equipment may stage across.

The Broadwalk itself is defined in Chapter 108 as the city-owned paved area immediately landward of the beach between Sherman Street and Jefferson Street, and the city publishes it as a brick-paved promenade stretching nearly two and a half miles along the Atlantic. Those two facts belong together: the named extent is the part the city regulates as the Broadwalk, and the full two and a half miles is the part a load-in has to travel along. City parks are published as open from sunrise to sunset, which is another reason § 100.06's temporary permit exists at all.

Chapter 108 sets nesting season as March 1 through October 31 of each year — eight months, against the seven months (April 1 to October 31) that Miami Beach adopted in its own 2024 ordinance. For a touring calendar that one extra month is March, and March on this coast is not a quiet month.

§ 108.05 states the city's intent plainly: "no Artificial Light shall illuminate the Beach during Nesting Season." The route through that for an event is § 108.04, which allows a special event authorized under Chapter 102 or approved by the City Commission, held on or adjacent to the beach and having lighting needs, to be authorized during nesting season when a permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has been issued, with all activities conducted in accordance with that permit and the associated Florida Administrative Code rule requirements. Nighttime is defined in the same chapter as the period between sunset and sunrise, and the beach is defined as the unconsolidated material from the mean low-water line landward to the berm, dune or permanent vegetation line.

So a beach show between March and October carries a state permit on top of a city permit, and the state permit governs the lighting plot. That is a long-lead item and it is the one most likely to be discovered late, because it is not in the chapter anybody reads first.

Proscenium opening 97' W × 40' H × 4' D. Grid 81 feet from the stage floor and 85 feet from the house floor. Loft beams on ten-foot centers running upstage to downstage at 450 plf; channel wells on ten-foot centers rated 4,000 lb between hanging straps; thirty-three Titan hoists on 85-foot double battens at 1,250 lb distributed maximum live load each. Full house 6,500 seated, with the general admission floor varying by configuration.

House power is distributed by position rather than from a single company switch — three 400 A plus a 400 A isolated and a 200 A isolated at stage right, a 400 A and two 200 A isolated at stage left, 100 A, 200 A and 400 A at the dock, and two 400 A upstage right plus a 400 A house left at the grid, all on female cam locks. A four-hundred-amp service at grid level is not a common thing to find published, and it is the difference between a clean overhead build and a hundred feet of feeder up a ladder.

The dock is the constraint. A two-slip dock at stage level, 7' 11.5" wide and 9' 10" high with electrical levelers, 140 feet to stage right. Under eight feet of clear width means anything wider comes apart before it comes in, and a hundred and forty feet of push is a labor figure, not a dimension.

Which brings up the fact that makes this room worth a section of its own in Broward County. The pack states a non-union venue, and then publishes its own crew minimums: a crew chief on all calls, a minimum of four crew per truck, a minimum of three riggers for suspended equipment — two climbing and one on the ground — and a head rigger required on any call of eight riggers or more.

Eight miles north, the county's principal performing arts house runs IATSE Local 500 as its exclusive technical services personnel for all productions in its main theatre, and its convention center reserves motors, truss and rigging equipment to a single exclusive provider who also approves every rigging plan before a show begins. Those are two genuinely different crew plans inside one county and twenty minutes of each other. One is a supervision exercise against a house department with an approval deadline attached; the other is a published headcount floor that a production is expected to meet itself. A company that works both ends of Broward has to be able to do either, and the mistake is assuming the model from last month's show applies to this one.