Event production in Stuart
the city where the meter moves when the ground does

Most of the codes read for this programme spread the sound standard across a division of definitions, a division of levels, a table of zones and a schedule of exemptions. Stuart does not. Article VI of Chapter 20 contains exactly one section — section 20-151, Sound regulation, adopted by Ordinance No. 2315-2015 on 23 November 2015 — and that one section carries the limits, the measurement method, the measurement location and all eleven exemptions.

The limits are as short as the article. For every source of sound except vehicles, the maximum permissible levels are 80 decibels from 8:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m., and 60 decibels from 10:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m. — and the code adds four words that do a great deal of work: at all times throughout the city. There is no zoning map behind that number. There is no residential band and no commercial band — Jupiter, sixty-five miles south, assigns every property in town to one of four named sound zones and prints three tables to resolve them; Stuart prints two figures and a clock. Downtown ground on Flagler Avenue and a cul-de-sac three miles south are held to the same pair of figures, which means the usual first question on a Stuart site — what zone am I standing in — has no bearing on the answer.

Vehicles are handled by reference rather than by number: for all noise emanating from vehicles, the maximum permissible sound level and all other vehicular noise regulation is whatever Florida Statutes sections 316.293 and 403.415 prescribe, as amended from time to time. That matters on a load-in with trucks and lifts idling in a closed street, because the rule governing them is a state rule the city has not localised.

Subsection (d) sets the location of measurement in two clauses that look administrative and are not:

(1) Non-vehicular noise originating from private property shall be measured at the property line of the property where the noise originates. (2) Non-vehicular noise originating from a public right-of-way or public property shall be measured at a distance of 50 feet from the source of the noise.

Read the second one again. On public ground the compliance point is not a boundary at all. It is a radius around the loudspeakers, and it travels with them. A street festival on a closed block is not measured at the kerb of the nearest residence, however close that residence happens to be; it is measured fifty feet from the source. A show on a private lot behind the same buildings is measured at that lot's line, however far the line happens to be.

Those two regimes produce different system designs for the same audience. A property-line standard rewards distance, barriers and anything that puts geometry between the box and the boundary. A fifty-foot standard rewards none of those things. Nothing beyond fifty feet helps, because nothing beyond fifty feet is being measured; the only variables left are the level at the box, the number of boxes and how the energy is distributed in the first fifty feet of the room. That is an argument for more, smaller, lower sources rather than fewer loud ones, and it is an argument that is settled before anyone draws a plot, not after the first complaint.

Exemption (8) is generous on its face. Amplified sound associated with special events permitted by the city is exempt from the limits — including but not limited to: cultural and sporting events; artistic performances; ceremonial or traditional activities, including outdoor markets, festivals, speeches, concerts, or shows that have been permitted, approved, sanctioned, or sponsored by the city.

Then the code takes most of it back in one sentence: notwithstanding this exemption, the city as the permitting agency reserves the right to require the operators of such special events to lower the sound pressure or to comply with subsection (b). No threshold is stated, no complaint count, no measurement, no notice period. The exemption exists at the discretion of the agency that issued the permit, and that discretion is exercisable at any time — which in practice means during the show.

The planning consequence is specific. A system designed to run at the exemption's ceiling has no headroom to give back when it is asked to. A system designed so that the 80-decibel figure in subsection (b) is reachable without re-aiming anything can comply with an on-the-night instruction in the time it takes to pull a master, and keep the show intelligible while it does. The difference between those two designs is decided weeks earlier.

The last sentence of the exemption is aimed at buildings rather than productions, and it is worth knowing which side of it a room is on: nothing contained herein shall be construed as otherwise exempting amplified sound venues from complying with the requirements of subsection (b) without a special event permit. A venue that programmes amplified music as a matter of course is on 80 and 60 on every date it does not hold a permit for.

Two of the eleven exemptions carry a number of their own. Exemption (9) covers portable emergency power generators, portable pumps, portable compressors and similar portable equipment run by a motor or internal combustion engine, used to abate a bona fide emergency condition, and holds them to no more than 85 dB sound pressure off the premises. Exemption (11) gives landscape, power washing and lawn maintenance equipment, including truck-mounted engines, compressors and pumps, the same 85-decibel allowance.

Everything turns on the qualifying clause in (9). The exemption is for equipment used to abate a bona fide emergency condition — a flooded street, a failed lift station. A generator trucked in because a park has no service is not abating an emergency, and nothing in the article extends (9) to it. On a Stuart site with no shore power, the generator is an ordinary source of sound under subsection (b) like any other, measured by the same rule in subsection (d) as the loudspeakers it is feeding — which on public ground means fifty feet from the generator, not fifty feet from the stage.

Exemption (10) sets a window rather than a level, and it reaches load-out: sanitation operations, including the unloading, emptying or collection of any waste or recyclable container, are permitted only between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. daily. A skip emptied at midnight after a strike is outside the only exemption that would have covered it.

Stuart's special events rules are Article III of Chapter 36, Streets, Sidewalks and Other Public Places, sections 36-61 through 36-74. The chapter titled Amusements and Entertainments, Chapter 6, is reserved and contains nothing at all. Where a city files its special event rules varies across this programme — Homestead and Jupiter both file theirs somewhere other than a parks chapter too — so the placement is worth knowing and is not claimed here as anything more than a filing address.

The definitions section is where the threshold sits. Assembly means a gathering of 25 or more persons in one place for a common purpose. The city's own published guidance applies the same figure to the permit trigger: on public property or right-of-way, an application is needed for any festival, celebration, concert, parade, block party, art show, craft show or other gathering of 25 or more persons having common purpose, design or goal. On private property the trigger is not a headcount at all but a list of activities — commercial sales, exhibitions, displays, performances, fairs, carnivals, bazaars, contests, rodeos, the installation of temporary tents, and anything tending to cause abnormally large or excessive crowds or traffic.

The private-property list is the one that catches productions by surprise, because it makes the tent the trigger rather than the crowd. An outdoor gathering on a private lot with a marquee over it needs an application whether forty people come or four hundred.

Section 36-63(b) prints a four-row table of application deadlines by estimated total attendance: 100 or less, a minor event, 14 days in advance; 100 to 1,000, a low impact event, 30 days; 1,000 to 5,000, a medium impact event, 60 days; 5,000 or more, a high impact event, 90 days.

The city's Special Event Requirements sheet, revised January 2021, prints a different table and introduces it with the words in accordance with the current City Ordinance. For events on public property it gives five levels: 25 to 100, thirty days; 101 to 500, thirty days; 501 to 1,000, ninety days; 1,001 to 5,000, ninety days; 5,001 or more, one hundred and eighty days. For events on private property it gives four: 25 to 500, fourteen days; 501 to 1,000, thirty days; 1,001 to 5,000, ninety days; 5,001 and up, one hundred and eighty days.

Set the two side by side and the handout is the harder document at every size that matters to a production. A two-thousand-person festival is sixty days under the code and ninety days under the sheet. A six-thousand-person event is ninety days under the code and a hundred and eighty under the sheet — twice as long. The sheet also splits public from private ground, which the code's table does not, and starts its ladder at twenty-five rather than at a hundred.

Two further timing facts sit outside both tables. County and state road closures require sixty days' notice upon completion of the permit process, and the organiser initiates that request with the appropriate agency — the Department of Transportation or the Coast Guard, a pairing that follows from a downtown wrapped around the St. Lucie River and crossed by lift and fixed spans. Having to ask the state before closing a road is ordinary enough that Sunrise and Deerfield Beach both deal with it. Being told in the same sentence that the alternative authority might be federal and maritime is particular to a city built on a navigable river, and it decides which agency a closure plan is even addressed to. And the date itself is not guaranteed: the city reserves the right to deny any special event application or request that either competes directly or indirectly with annual events that regularly occur within the city. That is a denial ground based on the city's own calendar rather than on anything about the applicant, which makes date selection a review question here rather than a preference.

The level definitions on the city's sheet run by attendance — the first level is a request expecting twenty-five to a hundred participants requiring very little planning, coordination, review and administrative support; the fourth is a request estimating one thousand and one to five thousand requiring substantial support. Then one sentence is printed under the first, second, third and fourth definitions alike: any events which require primary or extensive road closures will be classified as Level 4 events.

That sentence detaches the classification from the crowd. A sixty-person block party that closes a street is a fourth-level event, with a fourth-level review and the ninety-day lead time the sheet attaches to that band on public ground. The closure, not the attendance, is what sets the clock — which is the opposite of how almost every production first estimates a permit timeline, and it is the single most expensive assumption to get wrong in this city.

A closure also brings staffing with it. Any application requesting a road closure within city limits is required to hire at least one extra duty police detail officer, with the number determined by the Stuart Police Department, and the same requirement attaches to any application requesting the serving of alcohol. Where a county road closes, Martin County must be named as an additional insured alongside the city.

Section 36-68 lists the standards a permit is issued against: a complete and accurate application, no unreasonable interference with routine city services including police, fire-rescue and emergency medical protection, water and stormwater or sanitary sewer service and solid waste collection, compliance with safe vehicular and pedestrian passage, no elimination of or undue interference with access to adjacent private property, deposits and fees paid, insurance certificates received.

Then standard (10), phrased as a concession and operating as a limit. As an exception to the above standards, city events may temporarily interfere with or usurp the general public's free use of designated public property. Such city event shall not restrict the use of the public property by the general public for more than five days, without the express approval of the city commission.

Five days is a build measurement, not an event one. It is the whole occupation — fence to fence, first truck to last broom — and a multi-day festival with a staged load-in spends most of it before the gates open. A three-day event with a two-day build is at the ceiling on the morning the public first sees a fence. Past that, the authority is not the city manager's to give; it is the commission's, and it moves on the commission's meeting calendar rather than the production's.

A Stuart special event permit may be revoked by the city manager or police chief, or their lawful representatives, at any time, on either of two findings. The first is the expected one: that the health, safety or welfare of the persons attending or of the public is reasonably threatened by an emergency or disorder which has arisen. The second is narrower and more likely: that any of the special conditions established by the city have not been satisfied. A condition written onto the permit — a cable route, a barricade count, a sound instruction under section 20-151(e)(8) — is a revocation trigger on its own, with no emergency required.

The consequence is assigned explicitly. In the event of revocation, the applicant is responsible to close down the special event and disperse the invitees, and in the event of noncompliance the city manager, police chief or their representatives may close it down and disperse them. That is an orderly-shutdown obligation sitting on the permit holder, and it is the reason a Stuart show plan is worth writing with a defined stop sequence: house lights, programme material, an announcement path and a crew brief that does not depend on anyone reading a situation correctly at the time.

Section 30-6(a) requires a written permit from the city manager for any special event in any public park or recreation facility. Subsection (b) then carves out an exception, and it is conjunctive — the event must satisfy every one of the four:

(1) is wholly within a park or recreation facility; (2) will not occupy more than 50 percent of the area of the park or facility; (3) is scheduled for no more than six hours; and (4) is not repetitive or conducted as a series of events.

Both numbers are production numbers. Six hours is a doors-to-strike window, not a showtime — a two-hour concert with a three-hour build and an hour of load-out is at the edge of it before a note is played. And a half-the-park footprint is measured by area, which on a small downtown park is reached by a stage, a mix position, a barrier line and a service road long before it is reached by an audience. A production that wants the exception has to design to both at once; most do not, and the honest answer is usually that the permit was always required.

The fourth test catches programmes rather than events. A series is excluded by definition, so a concert run across consecutive weekends is inside the permit system from its first date, however small each date is.

The park conduct rules prohibit possessing, consuming or serving any alcoholic or intoxicating beverages in any park and recreational area except for special events for which a city permit has been obtained pursuant to the application procedures set forth in section 30-6. The piers and riverwalks section carries the same prohibition for alcohol on or under piers or riverwalks, with the identical exception pointing at the identical section.

That is a tidier arrangement than it looks. On a Stuart waterfront event there is no separate alcohol instrument to chase: the park-event permit is the thing that makes a bar lawful on the riverwalk, and the bar is therefore inside the same application, the same site plan and the same review as the stage. The state licence sits on top of it — a licence extension or special event licence filed with the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, with a copy of the approved licence submitted to the city when the special event application goes in.

The park rules also govern the system in a way worth reading before a plot is drawn. It is prohibited to use an electronic public address system or other mechanical sound amplification devices, including radios and electronic sound reproduction equipment of any kind, at such a high volume level as to unreasonably interfere with the use and enjoyment by others of the park. That is a qualitative standard sitting alongside the numeric one in section 20-151, and the two are enforced by different people.

The instruction is four words long and it is absolute: all tents must be weighted down — no stakes allowed. It is not written for a beach, a seawall or a particular park. It is the city's blanket rule for permitted events, and it applies on turf as readily as on hardstanding.

The inspection trigger is given as a size rather than an area or an occupancy: the City of Stuart Fire Inspector is required to inspect any tent used at a special event that is larger than a 30 by 30 tent. One dimension, published, with no square-footage conversion to argue about.

Ballast instead of stakes changes the load schedule rather than the tent. It puts weight on the truck, it puts weight on the ground, and on a park it puts a point load where the drawing shows a soft stake. The decision it forces is a vehicle decision made weeks out, because the ballast arrives on the same trucks as the structure and nothing about the permit will remind anyone. What is unusual is the reach: a coastal no-stakes rule follows from sand and from what lies under it, while Stuart applies the same instruction to every permitted event on every surface in the city.

The site plan the city asks for is explicit about what it wants to see, and it reads like a production document rather than a planning one: food vendors by approximate number and type, entertainment and stages by approximate number and type, display areas, tent locations, directional signage, parking on and off site, parking for recreational vehicles, traffic ingress and egress points, bathroom and sanitation facilities, garbage collection areas, lighting areas, first aid area, and alcoholic beverage distribution. Section 36-63(e) adds the anticipated use and location of electrical, telecommunication, gas, water and sewer hook-ups, and the attendee entrance, exit and emergency gates.

Stuart's single-use plastics policy is not a sustainability aspiration bolted onto the permit; it is two ordinances the event guide applies by name. All polystyrene containers are prohibited per Ordinance 2413-2019. And Ordinance 2416-2019 prohibits the distribution of plastic straws in the provision of food and beverage services in any retail establishment including any special events occurring within the city — with the working rule that non-plastic straws are permitted but no straws should be displayed for self-dispensing, but rather upon customer request only.

The food service rule reaches further than the drinks rule. All single-use containers, bags, bowls, plates, trays, forks, spoons, knives and like items designed for distribution of prepared foods should not be made from plastic or polystyrene, and plastic bags, whether single-use or resealable, are not permitted unless filled or sealed prior to receipt by the food service provider. Beverages may be served in recyclable cups, cans or bottles, with first and second grade plastics preferred.

Two things make this a production concern rather than a catering one. First, the responsibility is assigned upward: event organizers are responsible for educating and obtaining compliance by any vendor or mobile food truck participating at the event under the issued event permit. The food truck's breach is the permit holder's breach. Second, the enforcement ladder ends somewhere a production will not want to be — escalating penalties for a first and second violation, and on a third, a mandatory hearing with the City Magistrate, with the city's guide warning that a breach inside a special event may additionally cost the security deposit.

There is one more rule in the same family that catches the marketing rather than the bar. Banners, flags, balloons and similar attention-attracting devices are prohibited under section 8.02.00 of the Land Development Code, with community and non-profit event banners permitted by approval, issued a sticker that must be displayed on the front, and removed by the organiser. And city message boards are not available: they are for notification of road closure and detours only.

The Lyric Theatre, 59 SW Flagler Avenue, is the exception to everything this programme usually finds. It publishes a dated facility technical packet, and the packet answers the questions a production asks rather than the ones a brochure answers.

The house is 511 seats, given by section: orchestra 271 including 12 accessible, lower balcony 150, upper balcony 74, box 16. The workable stage space is 34 feet deep by 33 feet wide. Rigging is three motorized battens, one of them front of house, with a load limit of 1,200 pounds per batten. Soft goods are published as three 40-foot travelers at 21 feet 5 inches high, six black legs at 10 feet by 21 feet 6 inches and two black borders at 5 feet by 40 feet, and the main drape is noted as opening from stage left and not guillotining — which decides how a scene change can be covered before anyone proposes one.

Road service power is published as two separate panels with declared purposes: a 400-amp three-phase fused panel for lighting only, and a 60-amp single-phase panel for sound only, stage left, with a 60-amp single-phase shore power circuit. A split that assigns services to disciplines by name is a useful thing to know before a distro plan is drawn, because it removes the usual argument about which tie-in a visiting system is allowed to touch.

Hospitality is published at the same resolution: a star dressing room stage left with private bathroom and shower; a flex backstage space with modular panels to create dressing rooms, with bathroom facility and no shower; two small basement rooms and a chorus room, none with plumbing. The theatre also states plainly that there are no laundry facilities on site. And the packet gives the stage and delivery entrance as the theatre's own Flagler Avenue address — a downtown street frontage, with no separate dock, dock height or truck bay published anywhere in it.

Outside that one building the published record thins out sharply, and what remains is a dimension table for covered structures. The city's pavilion rental listing gives a size for each: Flagler Park Pavilion 1 at 34 by 34 feet and three small pavilions at 17 by 17; Memorial Park's five, from 20 by 20 down to 12 by 12; Haney Creek Park and both Poppleton Creek pavilions at 32 by 32; the two Kiwanis Park pavilions and Shepard Park at 24 by 30; the Guy Davis pavilion at 20 by 20 and the Martin Luther King pavilion at 18 by 24.

That table is the city's published venue inventory, and what it leaves out is the point. A covered footprint is not a service rating, a vehicle route or a point load, and none of those appears for any city ground. Nor does a floor area for any bookable interior. The figures a crew needs in order to arrive once rather than twice are, with the single exception of the theatre, obtained by walking the site — which is stated here rather than guessed at.