Downtown Construction Noise Likened to a Jet

The company building the downtown parking structure warned anxious downtown merchants that the construction din could go as high as 87 decibels when crews began driving 50-foot concrete piles into the ground at the corner of Santa Clara and California streets.

That would be roughly equivalent to the sound at a noisy intersection, project manager Gordon Crane told the merchants in April.

But a professional noise meter reading taken Friday by a Camarillo-based company showed that the pounding hit a high of 101 decibels.

That would be more like the sound of a jet plane taking off, according to the World Almanac.

The pile drivers pounded at a record clip Friday, hammering 20 more of the unwieldy rods into the earth. That almost doubles the previous record of 11 in one day, foreman Rob Stacks said.

All of the piles--253 of them--should be in within 15 working days, said Pat Richardson, who is overseeing the project for the city.

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They form the backbone for a four-story, 500-space parking structure scheduled to be completed in the spring.

Meanwhile, on surrounding streets, local merchants and restaurateurs continued to monitor their buildings for cracks from the earth-shaking vibrations and seek ways to block out the ear-splitting pounding that rattled their buildings and annoyed customers.

City Atty. Bob Boehm and project manager Bill Hatcher reiterated that the city is not violating its noise ordinance.

Ventura’s noise ordinance states that between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., ambient noise cannot exceed 60 decibels.

But according to the “special noise sources” section of the ordinance, construction devices such as pile drivers, steam shovels and pneumatic hammers are exempt from that daytime decibel limit.

“It is not precluded by any city ordinance,” Boehm said of the pounding from the pile driving. “It is one of the things we’re going to have to live with if we want to improve Ventura.”

Hatcher explained the logic of the law.

“There is no way construction work could be done within the ambient noise level,” he said. “You’d never be able to build anything.”

Nevertheless, The Times wanted to see how loud the banging really was.

Using a $10,000 sound-level meter, Robert H. Naslund and Benjamin Farias of Phoenix-E, a Camarillo-based engineering firm, took readings from points on each of the four sides of the construction site Friday between 2 and 3 p.m.

Holding the sensitive microphone toward the towering diesel power hammer, they peered at the computerized digits flashing on the blue instrument.

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The hammering began. The digits in the decibel window began to fluctuate wildly: 80-93-85-90-80-101 as hammer met concrete.

Naslund explained that the human ear can hear sounds between 20 and 160 decibels.

“When it reaches 110 to 150, you start to feel pain,” he said.

According to the sound-level meter, the pounding was loudest along the alley behind the 500 block of Main Street, where the meter hit 101 decibels.

The noise on the west side of the lot, near the umbrellas of California 66’s patio, hit 98. At the front door of the Henshaw Hotel, on the south side of the lot, the meter hit 90. And on the east side of the lot, toward the Ventura Theatre, the meter reached 96.

Naslund explained that sound waves travel toward lower temperatures. That means noise can be loudest in the morning hours when the air is still cool.

As the pounding thudded on through its third day, merchants on the periphery continued to grimace, and tried to imagine a quiet future in the shadow of a new parking structure.

“I don’t know when they take lunch,” said Frank Parong of California 66, who said his customers compare it to an earthquake or Jurassic Park. “But it sure isn’t at noon, because the place was pounding during lunch.”

Jonathon Enabit, manager of Nona’s Courtyard Cafe at the Bella Maggiore Inn on California Street, said he got a lot of complaints early in the morning from customers.

“Starting at 7:30 a.m. it was pound, pound, pound, right through lunch,” he said. “Now we are warning people when they make reservations. But we tell them how much better it will be next year with all the parking.”

MacGregor is a Times staff writer and Selna is a Times correspondent.