Chapel Hill’s noise ordinance aims to ensure reasonable peace and quiet for residents in their 
homes. Typically, people use the law to rein in loud parties or construction projects that go on into the wee hours of the morning. Does that mean people who work from home or cover night shifts and sleep during the day are out of luck?
At the March 7 Town Council meeting, homeowners on the East 54 homeowners association board petitioned council to consider these issues. A boxing gym had opened in a storefront underneath the Community Home Trust condos, and homeowners had since endured loud music, shouting, rattling chains and thumping on punching bags from 5:30 in the morning until 8 at night. Even a deaf homeowner had been disturbed by the incessant vibrations.
Homeowners had called the police, who agreed the disturbance was loud, but they could do nothing because mixed-use developments are exempt from the noise ordinance.
That exemption caught my attention. Developers of large apartment buildings routinely include a small retail space in order to qualify for mixed-use zoning, which allows a significantly higher floor-area ration than multifamily residential zoning. That is, they can build much more densely and have many more residential units if they propose even one small retail space than if they were to build only apartments.
But at what price to quality of life?
Neither the landlord at East 54 nor the boxing gym as tenant is required to put in extra soundproofing, so both washed their hands of homeowners’ complaints.
Council can’t prohibit certain types of legitimate businesses, nor would we want to. A boxing gym adds diversity to our commercial mix.
The solution seems to lie in adding soundproofing to noisy businesses. Perhaps it could be addressed in the rewrite of our land use management ordinance, which is at the start of a three-year process.
That won’t help the East 54 homeowners in the short term. Council asked staff to come back with solutions.
— Nancy Oates
plurimus
/ March 12, 2018The first rule of fight club is………..
Wouldn’t the solution be to update the codes to require soundproofing for noisy applications that are co-located with residences? (bars, gyms, dance studios, theaters etc?).
Sounds like the codes are ill prepared for “density”.
Nancy
/ March 12, 2018Plurimus, you make far too much sense.
David
/ March 15, 2018Mixed-use developments are typically touted as affording folks the opportunity to “live, work, and play” in the same place. But what happens when one person’s working or playing interferes with another’s living?
Soon after the 140 West condos were occupied, the new residents began complaining about the nighttime noise from nearby student bars. That particular kind of urban vibrancy apparently wasn’t appreciated, but what did they expect when they decided to live on the main downtown street of a college town?
Adequate soundproofing standards for dense residential and mixed-use areas certainly should be incorporated into the new LUMO. And, while we’re at it, let’s do something about traffic noise mitigation for residents of neighborhoods, such as Little Ridgefield, adjacent to increasingly noisy to major transportation corridors.