Blairgowrie resident long for action against club’s excessive noise

Residents of Bordeaux, and parts of Blairgowrie, have grown frustrated with the alleged constant noise coming from the Amigos Bar and Grill, which is located in Randview Shopping Centre.

Residents have alleged that they are unable to sleep or rest because of the club, which plays music until late at night nearly every day.

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Many households also have children who are affected, especially when they try to study for exams, or when parents try to put little children to bed.

A resident, Dricky van As, who lives approximately 230m from Amigos, said that the noise coming from the venue has severely impacted her peace and quality of life.

“The noise levels make it impossible to enjoy a quiet evening at home or get a good night’s sleep. This disruption has become a constant source of frustration, especially as it continues to worsen. This issue has persisted since December 2023. For nearly a year now, we have been struggling to address this disturbance with limited progress, despite ongoing complaints and reports.”

Those who live closer to the club are also struggling with screaming, shaking windows from the loud bass, bottles breaking, and worse on some nights. Multiple requests to the city and Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) have been made, but nothing has been achieved.

“The community have tried reaching out, but these efforts have, unfortunately, yielded no results. The lack of response from the club’s management adds to the frustration, as it seems they are unwilling to engage with the community on this matter.”

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She added that, along with other residents, she sent numerous emails to the relevant departments at the City of Johannesburg, seeking some form of intervention. They have also logged countless calls with JMPD, but their complaints are continuously overlooked.

“The residents are desperate for action. Whether that involves stricter enforcement of noise regulations, regular monitoring, or any other measure that will address and control this ongoing disturbance. Our complaints are falling on deaf ears. They operate at full capacity with extremely high noise levels most nights of the week, which affects the entire neighbourhood.”

Amigo’s owner Moses Chuene admitted that he is aware of the complaints and has taken measures to control and reduce the sound from the club.

“I have, at numerous occasions, taken noise measurements. I have hired an acoustic engineer to test for a good two weeks on busy days, and the results are there to be seen. I was advised by the municipality to completely close all windows and reinforce by adding another layer of windows and I did exactly that. This costed almost R100 000.”

He added that the obvious thing to do was to reduce the volume levels, which was done, as it is controlled from the office, and the DJ’s have limited volume.

“JMPD enforces the by-laws and are very much qualified to do so. If there were any valid transgressions they would have done so. Complainants are faceless people. Most of my customers are from the surrounding area. I am open today and operating without any problems because I follow all the rules and by-laws.”

Operation manager, Naazim Kajee, of Urban Management Regulatory and Compliance Intergrated Service Delivery, confirmed that they are aware of the issue and are attending to it.

“This issue is being attended to on different levels in different departments. We have to plan around stakeholders and resources to be available for a specific date to deal with it. There are also processes that need to be followed in order for us to have a fruitful outcome. We will not waste resources and time in an operation which will have minimal impact, hence the planning is currently in place.”

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