Upper East Side Neighbors Tormented By Noisy Construction Site

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Residents of a Yorkville block are being tormented by the construction of a self-storage building, where constant jackhammering has produced ear-splitting noise that has made their homes "unlivable" and even drawn a summons from the city.

Excavation work began late last year on the eight-story building at 424 East 90th St., between First and York avenues. Replacing a former parking garage, the project by the Parkland Group development company will result in a 104,000-square-foot personal storage facility.

Since drilling began, neighbors say they have been subjected to an onslaught of noise from around 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. each weekday, inducing headaches and rattling homes.

"It is just loud reverberating, literally shakes your furniture, jackhammering nonstop," Lauren Trapanotto, who lives across the street, told Patch. Using a handheld meter, Trapanotto has measured the sound inside her apartment at more than 90 decibels — equivalent to a lawnmower or a motorcycle heard from 25 feet away.

"I work from home right next to the site and it’s made my apartment basically unlivable," another resident wrote on Nextdoor. "I’m trying to decide if I should attempt to terminate my lease and move because of it."

An initial visit by city inspectors in January yielded no violations, as Upper East Site first reported. Then, last Tuesday, inspectors from the city's Department of Environmental Protection stopped by again, having been prodded by City Councilmember Julie Menin's office.

This time, inspectors issued a summons to the construction company, P.B. Brown, for "unreasonable noise from construction devices." The city found that "the noise being admitted from the site was loud enough to disturb the peace," according to a copy of the summons shared with Patch.

Last week, P.B. Brown affixed a notice to the construction fencing, apologizing for the noise and pledging to "expedite the rock chopping" with the goal of being done by the end of April. A P.B. Brown project manager, Justin Scagnelli, also contacted Trapanotto directly, saying the company had spent $30,000 to install soundproofing blankets on the fencing around the construction site — and offering to give Trapanotto noise-canceling earmuffs to help mitigate the noise.

In a statement to Patch, a P.B. Brown executive added that the company planned to delay work until 8 a.m., shorten each workday, and enlist a third-party management company to manage noise levels.

"We are anxious to get this part of our building process completed as soon as possible as we understand the inconvenience it is causing," representative Guy Saccento wrote in an email.

Still, those steps have hardly convinced Trapanotto, who also noted with dismay that a hearing on the violations is not scheduled until mid-May. The penalty if J.B. Brown is found guilty, meanwhile, would be just $560.

"That is offensive to me, when that is one-sixth of the average rent of this neighborhood," she said.

On Friday, Menin sent a letter to Dr. Steven Brauser, CEO of the developer Parkland Group, requesting that he join the community on a walkthrough of the site to discuss noise mitigation. The lawmaker had received no response by Monday afternoon, according to Menin's spokesperson.

Scagnelli, of P.B. Brown, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the Parkland Group could not be reached for comment.

However the situation shakes out, Trapanotto says she has become convinced that the city's construction laws are in need of reform, as the rise of work-from-home puts more residents in close proximity to daytime worksites.

And as a "pro-housing" resident, she is especially galled that the ordeal has all been in service of a storage facility, rather than an apartment building that might bring more benefits.

"It’s not even something helpful," Trapanotto said. "It's just so we can store more of our stuff."

Related coverage: Large Upper East Side Storage Building Moving Forward, Plans Show

Have an Upper East Side news tip? Email reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.