Outdoor concert venue caves in fight for right to party

Houston’s outdoor White Oak Music Hall has been given the green light to rock on — just not so much on school nights.  

A long-running feud between the two-year-old venue and its neighbors has been settled, with White Oak agreeing to install new sound-monitoring equipment, capping the number of outdoor concerts to 40 per year, and limiting the number and length of shows on school nights, especially on the nights before standardized tests, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.

The residents, who have long objected to the outdoor shows in their backyard, dropped a lawsuit that sought to prevent the concerts they say blared from amplified speakers, rattling their windows and keeping their children from studying, the newspaper reported.

The case also questioned Houston city officials' ability to settle such nuisance cases in a developing area near downtown, the newspaper reported.

"The real issue that came out of all of this is the utter failure of the city of Houston to show leadership in resolving a community problem," attorney Cris Feldman said in announcing the settlement on Tuesday. He called the lawsuit "a very imperfect way to approach the issue because really it was a political issue that the city showed no leadership in whatsoever."