By now you have heard that the Metropolitan Council has decided that the Burnsville amphitheater is not of a "Metropolitan Significance".  This decision is understandable if you realize that it was a political decision, not a logical one.

It was the Metropolitan Council which authorized the building of the amphitheater on that site in the first place.  It was council chairman Ted Mondale who recused himself from the proceedings when the StarTribune revealed compromising social ties, with the amphitheater landowner, Mike McGowan.  In addition to all of that, Lee Sheey, the McGowans' long time friend and attorney, now works for the Metropolitan Council as their lawyer.   It's Lee Sheey who will enforce the agreement that the Metropolitan Council has with Burnsville regarding the noise at the amphitheater.

We expected this outcome.  We collected nearly 7,000 signatures to start the proceedings. We were hoping for a 3-6 month delay in the project. We actually got 15 months. 

We have gotten a lot more too. In that 15 month period we alerted and educated the many Bloomington residences about the horrors of the project.  One thousand of you showed up at Oak Grove School on November 20 to express your opposition to the amphitheater.  You talked about the traffic issues, the crowd control problems on the Bloomington side of the river, the environmental issues, and of course the noise issues.

The official sound test--using cannon shots instead of real music--was conducted in November, and not during evening concert hours. The Metropolitan Council hired a sound engineer who adjusted this data with his computer model and then claimed that it represented a summertime test done during the evening concert hours.  Both the City of Bloomington and the neighborhood groups tried to get an actual summer test done, but it was blocked by the developer.

The original Environmental Assessment Worksheet [EAW] testing, which  predicted that the amphitheater would violate state noise standards, and The BAC sound demonstration are the only realistic music tests done so far.  The BAC demonstration showed what an actual concert could sound like in Bloomington neighborhoods. It's important to note that the neighborhood sound levels in the BAC demonstration were kept under State Noise standards-- and that's all that Rose Wild and Burnsville are promising to do. 

We know from the BAC sound demonstration that Burnsville and Rose Wild can comply with the agreement with the Metropolitan Council and the State Noise Standards and still make our life miserable during concert hours.

Are we winning or losing?  Well, we are actually winning. We have already delayed the amphitheater for two years, and have created obstacles in the form of two lawsuits that will be difficult for them to overcome. Additionally the legislature passed a new TIF law last year that reduces the tax revenue on the project by 40%. Burnsville will try to get the legislature to exempt them from the effects of this law, but with our own legislators watching out for us, and the current budget deficit, that seems unlikely. Although the amphitheater project may [or may not] already be dead for financial reasons created by the change in the TIF law, we must continue to challenge Burnsville and Rose Wild through our lawsuits.

We have had success so far because of the unique partnership between the neighborhood groups and the City of Bloomington. The Bloomington City Council, through the leadership of Mayor Gene Winstead, has been a solid supporter of this effort. 

Thank you, Mayor Winstead and thank you Bloomington City Council who have given us unanimous support with their votes.