Plaintiffs Take A Look At Oakwood’s Customers
Bennington Boats, a high end pontoon boat manufacturer based in Elkhart, has become a focus point in the lawsuit between nine residents of Sunset Park and Oakwood Resorts. Sunset Park is located across Conklin Bay from Oakwood.
During a hearing on a preliminary June 10 for an injunction against Oakwood to stop playing loud music from its patio, Tamra Henry, Oakwood’s general manager, testified last year Bennington rented the entire resort for several days, from Aug. 14-22, 2014, and had hired its own DJ to play music on the patio for its guests.
Plaintiff’s attorney Rob MacGill explained in a phone interview the plaintiffs didn’t have a problem with Bennington Boats coming to Syracuse, but it didn’t have a right to blast its music until midnight. “Communities around the country have shut these kinds of things down,” MacGill said referring to the loud music.
Soon after this interview Dr. Rex Parent contacted The Mail-Journal to say the plaintiffs attorney had requested to review contracts between Oakwood Resorts and bridal parties who were having their receptions at Oakwood. Parent also said the plaintiffs wished to depose someone from Bennington Boats.
When asked if Bennington’s DJ played music until midnight, Parent said no, because that would have been in violation of Syracuse’s noise ordinance. “The cops would have shut us down,” he stated. Syracuse Town Council approved an updated version of its noise ordinance regarding how late loud music could be played on weeknights and weekends in May 2014.
The Mail-Journal then contacted Syracuse Police Chief Tony Ciriello and Kosciusko County Dispatch and requested they search their call records for the dates of Bennington Boats expo to see if there were any calls regarding noise complaints for Oakwood. Both Ciriello and Sara Lancaster, assistant director of the Kosciusko County 911 Central Dispatch Center, expanded the parameters of their search. The results were they could not find any calls regarding Oakwood during the time Bennington Boats was at Oakwood.
Ciriello noted he checked the call log from Aug. 10 through the end of August 2014. There were no noise complaints called in at or about Oakwood during this time frame.
The hearing on the injunction will be continued at 1:15 p.m. July 21 in Judge Michael Reed’s court.