Marshall Moya via Department of General Services

Although the District government is trying to go forward with plans to memorialize the late Chuck Brown with a new outdoor performing arts venue, the people who live around the planned site aren’t so thrilled. Residents of the Langdon neighborhood say that the designs for an amphitheater at Chuck Brown Park, the half of Langdon Park that was renamed last year for the Godfather of Go-Go, would bring nothing but noise, disturbances, and traffic, The Washington Post reports.

Chuck Brown Park was first proposed by Mayor Vince Gray at a memorial service for Brown three weeks after the musician’s death. The project, as currently written, is expected to cost about $1 million to construct.

Marshall Moya, an architecture firm with several city contracts, recently scaled back its designs for the new amphitheater in hopes of making it a bit less loud. The park is home to a run-down amphitheater, which attracts summertime parties that already give neighbors a headache, and replacing it with a new venue might only worsen that effect. And, the Post reports, people living near Chuck Brown Park say they have been mostly cut out from the discussions:

“I like Chuck Brown, but the issue is . . . why was the community not consulted?” said Delores Bushong, a two-decade resident of nearby Hamlin Street NE who has organized opposition to the plans. “They did not tell us there was going to be a music pavilion here.”

…

Betty Jamison has lived across 18th Street NE from the park since 1958. The noise is so bad, she said, that she has stopped hosting her pinochle club on weekends. “I can’t hear my TV, I can’t read, I can’t even have guests,” she said.

Opponents of the new amphitheater also point out that a city ordinance limits musical performances to 60 decibels or below. That would hardly accomodate any tributes to Brown, whose style easily exceeded that soft limit.