Board considers $86K sound wall

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 1:27 am by Shaun Ryan
By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com

St. Augustine City Commissioners said Monday that they’ll consider approving a 14-foot-high, 150-foot-long sound-dampening wall at Hamilton D. Upchurch Skate Park on Red Cox Drive to help eliminate the irritating “ker-thump” of skateboards for nearby homeowners.
The $86,000 wall would reduce the sound level by nine to 12 decibels. But the commission declined to make a decision Monday to go forward.
Chief Operations Officer John Regan had recommended installing a wall that high but told the board he’d like more scientific research about how well it could work.
“If the board erects a 14-foot wall, changes the demographics of the park (to children only) and keeps the metal rails off, you’ll have a facility that will be compliant (with the city’s noise ordinance),” he said.
The commission’s frustration with the wall’s cost was evident Monday.
Mayor Joe Boles said, “This has been a nightmare from the beginning. I’ll never enter into a public-private partnership again. Not while I’m here.”
That money could have been used to help pave Riberia Street, he said.
The park was initially hailed as a successful partnership between the city and private entities that wanted to support skateboarding.
But homeowners on Flamingo Drive complained for months that the constant crash of skateboards hitting the park’s concrete surface ruins the peace of their homes and yards.
Homeowner Patricia Pribisco said, “A lot of us were against it.”
Her neighbor, John D. Hodgin, said the city’s sound tests showed that even on a slow skating day, the meter at his house recorded 160 “impulse events” per hour.
“People who speak for the park are well-meaning, but only the families who live near the park know what it’s like to live there.”
But the city sold their neighborhood on the skate park by promising an eight-foot earthen berm that would eliminate noise. The berm was never built and Regan said Monday that recent sound engineering tests show that a berm wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Commissioner Leanna Freeman said, “Somebody designed the park without a noise barrier.”
Vice Mayor Errol Jones said, “Yes, but we signed off on it. We approved it.”
Boles said, “It was sold to the community as a beginner’s skate park. It has been anything other than a beginner’s park. It’s a hangout. If you’re old enough to drive, drive to Treaty Park. If we had put it together as we originally proposed, it wouldn’t be the nuisance it is.”
Boles, a skater himself once, said he wanted an age restriction limiting it to youngsters.
But City Attorney Ron Brown said that would be difficult to enforce.
Jones said, “I’m tired of our city passing ordinances that we’re not prepared to enforce.”
Regan said the city had imposed a budget of $75,000 for a noise-dampening wall.
“This is a very difficult engineering problem,” he said. “But it’s not that difficult a construction project. The higher we make it the more it will be in compliance (with city noise ordinances).”
After the commission’s decision not to make a decision, Flamingo Drive resident Susan Hill said, “We hope the process will continue. An efficient noise berm would be in everyone’s best interest.”