Last week’s Colorado Supreme Court ruling in a case out of Salida could impact the future of concerts at Colorado Springs’ much-debated Ford Amphitheater.

Ford Amphitheater was built near Gleneagle and run by VENU, a Colorado Springs-based entertainment company. The amphitheater began hosting outdoor concerts in August 2024 and will end its first full concert season in October.

The venue received widespread complaints from neighbors over the past year about noise from concerts disturbing their homes. Residents who live more than a mile away from the amphitheater have said that they hear concert noise loud enough to violate the state’s 50 decibel maximum for noise pollution.

The lawsuit was brought by attorney Matthew Hobbs against the city of Salida for issuing a noise permit for the High Side! Bar & Grill to hold summer concerts, which Hobbs lives nearby.

On Sept. 8, the state Supreme Court unanimously sided with Hobbs. The exemptions amended into the state law in 1987 were meant to specifically cover governments and nonprofit entities that were putting on an event.

“(B)ecause the primary entities are either directly accountable to the public or constrained by a not-for-profit purpose, they’re less likely to abuse the exemption for their own economic benefit,” Justice William W. Hood III wrote in the decision.

Colorado Springs city spokesman Joe Hollmann said Sept. 9 that “We are aware of the recent ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court and are currently reviewing its implications. We will provide further updates as appropriate.”

Julian Ellis was the attorney representing Hobbs and led the successful argument at the Supreme Court. Ellis works for the Colorado Springs-based law firm First and Fourteenth, though he mainly works out of Denver.

Ellis said the ruling was in line with the Noise Abatement Act’s purpose of treating noise pollution as seriously as any other environmental pollution. He said that most locations that need a noise permit will not be affected because they are affiliated with governments or nonprofit event managers.

“This takes those outliers that were pushing the bounds of the law and brings them back within the statewide limits,” Ellis said.

Ford Hurts Families, a group that has long opposed the noise impacts of the amphitheater, said in a statement that they looked forward to the city and Ford Amphitheater making more changes.

“It is now clear that a city-issued permit does not exempt for-profit entities from the noise pollution limits of the state Noise Abatement Act, as VENU and Ford Amphitheater have previously claimed,” Ford Hurts Families stated.

Before the amphitheater had even opened, a nearby homeowners group filed a lawsuit in 2023 to block the construction. The lawsuit said that future concerts would violate the noise pollution laws and challenged the city’s ability to issue permits for the venue because it was run by a for-profit company.

The case was dismissed by an El Paso County District Court judge in January 2024. Judge David Shakes ruled that the possibility of noise violations was not enough to block the project and that the home-rule municipality rights of Colorado Springs gave the city latitude beyond the state noise laws.

Attorney Tobin Kern from Kern Law, the firm representing VENU, said in a statement that the company had been working to prepare for this possibility. Kern pointed to the nonprofit Venu Arts & Culture Foundation, which he said leases out the amphitheater in a similar approach to how Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater runs.

“If our Foundation needs to take on an even greater role in the venue’s operation because of this ruling, then we will look at making those changes,” Kern said.

The Secretary of State’s website states that the Venu Arts & Culture Foundation, also known as Notes Live Foundation, was registered in November 2024. The charity filing says that the foundation supports “local non-profit musicians, orchestras, and other artists.”

Ellis had some skepticism about how successful that approach by VENU would be. The Museum of Outdoor Arts, the nonprofit that owns Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater, has been in Greenwood Village since 1981. Ellis argued that the nonprofit’s track record was a way to tell if the venue was complying with the spirit of the court ruling as well as the letter of the law.

“I would hope that the locality would do the right thing as a government and say, ‘This is not being used by a nonprofit. The person who’s benefitting from this is a for-profit company,’” Ellis said.

In addition, Kern said the $1.5 million in noise mitigation improvements the amphitheater has added over the past year would help to keep the venue within the bounds of the Noise Abatement Act. Earlier this year Ford Amphitheater installed two noise mitigation tunnels near the back of the arena and modified the amphitheater’s sound system to address noise complaints.

“With these improvements we do not expect sound levels limits of either the state or city of Colorado of Springs to be violated, and our noise testing shows that so far,” Kern said.

VENU and the city set up a system of three neighborhood noise monitors in the spring to help track the noise levels from concerts. The noise permit issued by Colorado Springs for the 2025 concert season states that those monitors will track five-minute noise averages to see if they violate the background noise rules.

As of late July, city spokesperson Max D’Onofrio had stated that none of the Ford Amphitheater concerts had triggered a penalty for noise violations. The potential fine would be $500 per violation, which has to be confirmed by at least two of the noise monitors.

Gazette reporter Breeanna Jent contributed to this story.