Julie and Ted Driver didn’t attend pop band OneRepublic’s concert Aug. 9 that christened the new 8,000-seat, outdoor Ford Amphitheater on Colorado Springs’ far north side.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t hear the music, however.

The Drivers live off Roller Coaster Road and Mountain Pine Lane in unincorporated Black Forest, 4.4 miles northeast of the amphitheater’s location southwest of North Gate Boulevard and Voyager Parkway, according to a Google map estimate of the distance between their home and the venue.

The couple followed the amphitheater’s progress since it was proposed 1½ years ago. After OneRepublic took the stage, the Drivers stepped outside their house to determine if they could hear anything.

“We knew this was going to be the big opening night, so we were kind of preparing for it,” Julie said. “We wanted to see what we could hear; we were kind of nervous about that. And we did. We stepped out and we were like, ‘Oh, my Lord, we can hear it way clearer than we expected.’

“We listened to it for a while, then we came back inside,” she said. “Then we closed our windows to see how much of it came through. We could hear, it wasn’t like overwhelmingly loud, but we could still hear the bass notes and everything, even through the closed windows … There was no escape from that.”

Some nearby residents, though, sought to embrace — not escape — the amphitheater.

“You guys sound like the old curmudgeons from ‘Footloose,’” one commenter on the Next Door Digest social media app, who identified herself as a resident of the Greyhawk neighborhood less than 1 mile northeast of the amphitheater, said of critics. “It’s music. It’s not every night. It’s not that loud. And people are having fun.”

Since its debut, the Ford Amphitheater has received mixed reviews.

For sure, it’s earned the equivalent of standing ovations from concertgoers, community members and civic leaders; in social media posts and public comments, they’ve applauded the amphitheater as an exciting open-air venue for live music that offers top-drawer amenities — including luxury fire-pit suites — set against a scenic mountain backdrop.

Through Aug. 14, city of Colorado Springs officials reported they had received nearly 170 noise complaints about the Ford Amphitheater. Hundreds of similar complaints were posted on multiple threads on Next Door Digest and other social media sites.

JW Roth, the founder, chairman and CEO of VENU, said the number of complaints received by the city is misleading. Some people filed multiple reports, which inflated the overall total of city complaints that he contends was closer to around 65. He also questioned the authenticity of some complaints; a few came from areas as far south as Colorado Springs’ southeast side, which Google Maps shows is about 20 miles from the amphitheater.

Colorado Springs City Council President Randy Helms, who lives in the Northgate area north of the amphitheater and supported its development, said he spent four to five hours on opening weekend to drive and walk around nearby neighborhoods as well as in Black Forest.

He used an app on his phone to measure noise levels, listened to the sound from the amphitheater as well as from passing cars and spoke with neighborhood residents without explaining what he was doing or identifying himself as a councilman.

Acknowledging his measurements and findings were unscientific and anecdotal, Helms nevertheless said he got nothing but positive vibes from passers-by, while the amphitheater never seemed bothersome.

“I’m trying to be objective and there are some occasions when the music is loud,” Helms said. “But for the most part, 90% of the time, I don’t think it was annoying or intrusive or any of that.”

Not everyone agrees with Helms, of course.

Several complaints filed with the city or posted on social media sites came from nearby neighborhoods such as Greyhawk, Flying Horse, Northgate Estates and Northgate Highlands, according to an informal analysis that used El Paso County Assessor’s Office data and other online sources to verify and plot the addresses of commenters.

Other complaints came from outlying neighborhoods miles away, with unincorporated Gleneagle to the north and Black Forest to the north and northeast being some of the areas with multiple reports of excessive noise.

Von, who along with her husband, Lynn, live in a Black Forest neighborhood southeast of Baptist Road and Tari Drive that’s 4½ miles from the amphitheater, posted on Next Door Digest that the couple could hear music on opening night inside their house — and over the sound of their TV.

The division of opinion over the amphitheater was predictable.

In January 2023, the Colorado Springs City Council overwhelmingly approved the amphitheater, which was built at Polaris Pointe, a nearly 20-year-old, 200-acre mixed-use project ringed by residential areas. Over the last several years, Polaris Pointe’s developer had shifted the project’s focus from traditional retail and restaurant uses to entertainment concepts.

At the time the City Council considered the amphitheater, opponents said they feared thousands of concertgoers would create traffic and parking problems in nearby areas.

But they especially worried about the potential for unwanted noise.

A nearby resident and homeowners’ group sued VENU and the city in September, alleging sound and noise from the amphitheater would violate the state’s Noise Pollution Law and create a “public nuisance” and “noisy monstrosity.” That suit was dismissed in January; an appeal is pending.

As part of the City Council’s approval of the project, VENU implemented a series of noise mitigation measures to tamp down unwanted sound and alleviate concerns.

They included construction of a 28-foot-tall wall at the east end of the venue’s seating area to block noise, which reaches to 50 feet tall in its center. The wall will be replaced by a restaurant, bar and event center complex now under construction and targeted to open next year; that complex also would serve as a noise barrier, VENU officials have said.

A cluster of secondary speakers was installed to serve the lawn seating area so that stage speakers didn’t need to drive sound to the far reaches of the amphitheater seating areas and toward neighborhoods.

Also, the City Council required installation of two sound monitoring devices along Voyager Parkway and North Gate Boulevard. The devices connect to the amphitheater’s sound management system and give the facility’s management control over decibel levels and the ability to adjust them as needed.

Regardless of those measures, noise remains a tricky thing, experts say. It can travel for miles and be affected by weather and other factors.

For example, noise will drift farther in humid conditions, said Sam Milazzo, a teaching professor of physics at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. That would account for reports of Black Forest residents hearing music from the amphitheater several miles away; on opening night Aug. 9, skies were overcast and there was moisture in the air after on-and-off showers that day.

Julie Driver, a Black Forest resident who said she and her husband could hear amphitheater music on opening night, said they couldn’t hear it the next two nights when skies were much clearer .

Wind direction, meanwhile, can carry sound over long distances, said Jeff Kwolkoski, president and senior acoustical engineer of Wave Engineering, a Littleton-based acoustics, noise and vibration consultant.

A temperature inversion — a layer of cooler air at ground level and warm air above — also can allow sound to travel greater distances, he said. Temperatures on Aug. 9 had dropped into the upper 50s by the time the OneRepublic concert started, according to measurements taken for that day at the Colorado Springs Airport.

Sound also can travel more easily to homes or buildings that are at higher elevations and are perched above a business or venue that generating noise, Kwolkoski said.

Weather and physical factors aside, Kwolkoski said individual sensitivities play a big role in whether someone believes they’re being impacted by noise.

Two people with good hearing and who hear the same sound could react differently to it, he said.

“Some people may not even notice (the sound) that much,” Kwolkoski said. “Others, it may bother them a lot because of their individual sensitivity.”

And not everyone will be happy with sound even if businesses are within the legal noise limits put in place by local and state governments, he added.

“It’s not unusual at all to get complaints of noise, whatever the source of that noise is, when the noise is within the legal limit,” Kwolkoski said. “It doesn’t make everybody happy.”