Stories are going around the project could have chosen a quieter method of pile-driving
Frances Bula
Sun
Art Kelm has a few suggestions for the Vancouver convention-centre expansion — or, as he calls it, “this insane project.”
Number 1: That “the architect and all the people involved in the approval of the design and construction should be forced to attend at the site and listen to the pounding of every single one of these piles.”
Number 2: That the B.C. Assessment Authority send one of its assessors “to attend in the front of my apartment building for one week, Monday to Saturday, 10 hours a day. Then have him visualize this mental torture for 40 or 50 times this period, and prepare a written report advising whether in her/his opinion an assessment resulting in an annual levy of $6,200 in property taxes for a 1,600-square-foot condo is fair and equitable.”
Number 3: That Vancouver city council direct the region’s chief medical health officer do the same kind of assessment, to assess the “threat of harm to my mental and physical health as a result of this madness.”
You guessed it. Art Kelm is one very unhappy guy.
He and his wife, Mary Lewis, live in a condo on the northeast corner of the Carina building, which gives them a ringside seat at the construction site.
Kelm, a retired accountant, and Lewis, a retired doctor, moved to Vancouver to get away from the snow in Winnipeg.
“When you don’t have to stay there for the winter, you don’t” is his cost-benefit analysis of Winnipeg.
Until this year, they were thrilled with their new home.
Now, Kelm is spending his time writing angry letters. He has no problem with normal construction noise, he points out. After all, he’s lived in Coal Harbour for seven years, during which he has had one tower or another under construction most of the time.
But the convention centre is a different story, with its 1,000 piles that are eight storeys high.
“Has there ever been anything like it in the city of Vancouver history?” he writes in his forceful way in one of his many letters. “For this reason, I believe you have to treat this as a special situation that has to be addressed in an abnormal fashion.”
He is particularly conscious of the noise because he is retired, which means he gets to listen to it all day long.
What really sent him around the bend was the recent news that the pile-driving, which was supposed to end in December, is going to be extended until next May because of difficult soil conditions.
In the letters that he’s about to send off to all and sundry, Kelm is asking for some kind of relief: tax relief, alternate housing or “anything that will permit me to survive the up to one year of constant pile-driving.”
But he also hints darkly that it didn’t have to be like this. The rumour going around among residents and office tenants is that the project could have chosen a quieter method of pile-driving, but chose not to because it would cost more money.
Project manager Russ Anthony sighs just the tiniest bit when I ask him whether there’s any truth to this nefarious-sounding story.
“Yes, the rumour was going around that we can vibrate the piles in.”
Anthony says that piles can be vibrated in where the soil conditions are right. That’s not the case for most of the convention-centre site.
There’s another rumour that the pile-drivers could have baffles put on them to muffle the sound.
And there have been other theories and suggestions circulating about other sound-reducing techniques the project could use but isn’t.
But, he says, “they either don’t work or they don’t provide the benefits people think. There is no solution.”
You don’t have to take just Anthony’s word for it.
The project is about to have its annual general meeting on Nov. 15, where, he says, “we’re going to bring all these geotechies out” to talk to the neighbourhood’s cranky residents about pile-driving techniques. (For the record, it’s me who’s saying they’re cranky, not Anthony, a professional bureaucrat who would never use such a word even under torture, so don’t send him any hate mail.)
But Anthony swears that there aren’t that many unhappy locals. According to him, Kelm is one of only about half a dozen people who call regularly to complain.
Apparently, everyone else has adjusted.
We’ll find out. The annual general meeting is at 3 p.m., somewhere in the existing convention centre — watch for the advertisements announcing it.
Or you could always just call me, your convention-centre monitor: 604-605-2366. I’m lonely and I’d like to talk to you.
