State College Borough Council on Monday approved a noise ordinance waiver that will allow extended hours for construction of The Standard high-rise building for the next eight months.
Landmark Construction requested the waiver to help make up for time lost during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. The waiver permits work to take place from 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Saturday — instead of the previous 7 a.m.-7 p.m. — through the end of February. Tom Brasher, Landmark project manager, said that from July through February crews will be erecting structural precast panels.
The Standard, a 12-story commercial and resident under construction at the corner of South Atherton Street and West College Avenue, is scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2021.
Here at State College, the high-rise under construction on the former Garner Street parking lot, was previously granted a similar waiver. Here is scheduled to be completed by this fall.
Last year, The Standard was granted a noise waiver for early morning concrete pours, which at the time was met with concerns from neighboring residents who said they had already been disturbed by noise and vibration from the project.
Brasher said the upcoming work would be on the low end of typical construction noise.
‘This is not what I would call the most loud, egregious type of construction noise you could make,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have some back-up alarms for trucks. If someone drops tools on the deck it echoes and makes noise… Primarily this would be trucks driving in, the cranes picking [the precast] up, swinging them into place and then the work crews on the site setting them into place. Hand tools, yes you’ll have those types of noises.’
Councilwoman Theresa Lafer said while she was concerned about the early morning work last year, she has noticed few issues with the extended work that has been ongoing at the Here construction site.
‘Based on the amount of sound that comes from [Here], we can occasionally hear the workmen, but it’s nothing to be a problem,’ she said. ‘It’s not 3 o’clock in the morning anymore. It is a longer period of time, a couple hours each day, to put up with whatever sound there is, but it is not overwhelming.
‘I think this should be much less of a problem than we had last year.’
In addition to accelerating the project overall, Landmark’s request said the extra two hours nightly would increase chances of enclosing the building prior to the winter, reduce the duration of heavy truck traffic downtown and reduce the need for an influx of workers at the end of the project.
