43 times a minute, 'sound of progress' just makes people furious (w/video)

ST. PETERSBURG

It started on a Tuesday, April 29, 7:01 a.m., while kids were eating Cheerios and professors were starting to shower and retirees were trying to sleep in.

A steady hammering, metal on concrete, booming through downtown. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Forty-three beats per minute. So loud it rattled windows, throbbed through floors, woke people three blocks away.

A pile driver next to the downtown Publix parking lot was pounding poles up to 200 feet into the ground, constructing the skeleton for a 17-story apartment building.

All summer, people have been talking about the noise echoing across the campus at USF St. Petersburg, shaking the shuckers at the oyster bar on Central Avenue. Every weekday, plus some Saturdays, from sunup until 5 p.m., for five months now, the crushing cadence has continued. If you do the math, allowing time out for lunch and rain delays, that hammer has fallen more than 2 million times.

"It's absolutely horrible," said Pam Keating, 60, who owns a condo in nearby Charles Court. "A sprinkler head fell out of the ceiling. A neighbor had to take his dog to his daughter's house. A new mother has to stay with her parents in Sarasota because the baby can't sleep here."

• • •

At first, residents turned up the TV, cranked the stereo, ran the fan for white noise. When that didn't work, they told themselves to accept it. After all, they had moved downtown because of its growing vitality. This was just the next phase.

"They told us it would only last a couple of weeks. Okay, we can put up with that," said Leslie Scanlon, 57, who owns a condo at the Madison, next to the construction site. "But it just never stopped."

The first police complaint came May 19, three weeks after the banging began. In the next month, four more residents called the cops. Keating emailed city officials June 25. "The last two nights, residents have been awakened by heavy equipment, trucks backing up and beeping, bright lights," she wrote. "We are already suffering through maddening pile drivings."

By then, pile driver had become pile drivers. Two machines, running side by side, striking the same tone — a dull A-flat.

"And it's not just the sound. It's the pressure, the pounding," said Mark Bauer, 52, a professor at Stetson law school whose townhouse is across the street from the pile driver. "I've had pictures fly off the walls, glass shatter. There's a difference between unpleasant noise and life-changing disruptions. I can't read or write at home anymore."

Cashiers at Publix can feel the ground quiver. Inside American Spirits, wine bottles rattle on the shelves. A dentist two blocks away says his patients tolerate his drill, but they can't handle the clanging. The manager of the Hilton frets that pilots who can't rest during their layovers are going to have to find another hotel.

"The last time we got this many complaints about a project was the last time a high-rise of this size was built, Signature Tower in 2007," St. Petersburg spokesman Ben Kirby said. "A lot more people live downtown now, so the effect is magnified. It's got to stink for those residents who live nearby. But it's one of the prices of development."

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The sound of progress, he joked.

• • •

In July, the city sent a memo to nearby property owners and businesses explaining the project, and the pile driving. If it was intended to assuage their anger, it didn't work.

The project, at 330 Third St. S, is being built by Miami developer American Land Ventures and constructed by DPR Construction of Tampa. Original blueprints called for a seven-story structure, but two years ago, developers added another 10 stories. It will include 358 apartments of about 1,000 square feet each, a rooftop pool and clubhouse, fitness center, coffee and martini bars, a spa and 6,600 square feet of storefronts.

Since it's so tall, and only three blocks from Tampa Bay, concrete pilings have to be reinforced, and sunk far into the earth. The foundation will reach farther below the ground — as deep as 200 feet — than the tower will rise above it. "If we had bedrock, we wouldn't have to go so deep," DPR regional manager Page McKee said. "But we're working with clay, sediment and sand."

"Because of the nature of soils in this area, the foundation piers must be pile driven," city building official Rick Dunn wrote. "Other less noisy options are not feasible."

By law, crews are allowed to work 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and holidays; and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. "The contractor voluntarily agreed to not drive piles on Sundays," the memo said.

"Are we supposed to be grateful for that? Like they're doing us some kind of favor?" Scanlon, a special needs teacher, asked. "It was just so condescending, like they're giving us a day off. The builder should never have been granted a permit for such a big building in the first place. If the land won't support it, put up something shorter. How can the city condone all this noise and disruption of people's lives?"

Chronic noise can cause sleep disruption, noise-induced hearing loss, increased heart rate, even cardiovascular disease, according to a study published in the February issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

"People who are exposed to constant loud noise have to concentrate harder on trying to hear what they want to hear, whether it's the TV or someone talking to them," said Michelle L. Arnold, an audiologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "That causes them to lose concentration and become more fatigued."

On a recent afternoon, noise at the site registered 96 decibels — louder than a lawn mower or a semitrailer truck. No one should be enduring that for more than an hour at a time, according to a chart developed by an environmental engineer called "Dangerous Decibels."

But "construction sites are not typically subject to the City Noise Ordinance," spokesman Kirby wrote.

No citations have been issued.

• • •

Plans call for the pile driving to be completed by Oct. 15. "But that might not happen," McKee, the construction manager, said.

Workers in nearby restaurants and shops say they are almost getting used to the background booms. At lunch hour, they say, the quiet is startling. Then it kicks in again, until they get to go home.

Residents continue to flee — at least a dozen, by their neighbors' accounts.

Bauer, the law professor, spent the summer in Indiana so he could think in peace. He hoped the noise would have stopped by the time he returned. When it hadn't, he began drafting an injunction. He hasn't filed anything yet. "I don't want to be that guy." He wishes the city would try harder to balance the needs of residents and developers.

Keating, who works out of her home selling commercial cargo space, drove to North Carolina over the weekend on a quest for quiet.

Scanlon moved to another condo downtown, behind the Sundial movie theater, just past the range of the ringing. The final straw, she said, was when cracks started showing up beside her door, and the superintendent started marking them with red tape, to chart the crumbling.

Her place at the Madison has been empty since August. She listed it for sale, for less than she put into it.

"But no one's going to buy it," she said. "Not with all that banging."

News researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Contact Lane DeGregory at (727) 893-8825 or ldegregory@tampabay.com.