Caroline Bricknell doesn’t need an alarm to get up for her 8 a.m. class. By 7:15 a.m. each morning, she is awoken by the sounds of metal clanging next door. From her fifth-floor at 780 Columbus Ave., Bricknell lives with the sounds of construction at Northeastern’s newest residence hall.
“It’s so awful,” said Bricknell, a second-year combined criminal justice and psychology major. “Sometimes our building starts shaking. It’s awful because you can’t even block out the noise because you can physically feel it.”
Since September, construction at 840 Columbus Ave. has involved the loud, rhythmic banging sound of a pile driver from sunup to sundown, Monday through Saturday, to secure steel piles for the foundation of the new 23-story, 1,370-bed Northeastern residence hall, construction worker Jeff Sherman said. The site is located near International Village, or IV, which houses classrooms, the United Table dining hall and 1,900 beds.
Bricknell isn’t the only one inconvenienced by construction on the building. Zaidee Peterman, a second-year architecture major, has most of her classes in the architecture studio underneath Ruggles Station, meaning she walks past the site every day.
“I have to cover my ears and wear headphones,” Peterman said. “It really hurts my ears.”
The noise disturbance has affected students’ daily lives, interrupting co-op interviews, phone calls, study sessions and conversations.
“We just have to walk silently for that entire block because we just have no clue what the other one’s saying,” Peterman said of her walks past the construction site with her roommate. “We have to just be silent; no one is trying to have a conversation.”
Kayla Wolf, an assistant teaching professor of political science, has an office in Renaissance Park, the building right nextdoor to the construction site.
“It’s kind of a joke now at meetings, like we [the other professors with offices in the building] all just know, ‘Okay, the building’s shaking again, just keep going on like that didn’t happen,’” Wolf said. “I know some people really hate it and will do their office hours from home instead of being in person, but I think I’m used to it.”
According to the City of Boston website, an unreasonable level of noise is anything louder than 50 decibels from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. or anything louder than 70 decibels at any time, except for permitted construction.
From a room with a closed window on the 19th floor of LightView, 0.2 miles away from the construction site and approximately 190 feet up, a Huntington News reporter recorded an average noise level of 70.1 decibels, or dB, over 5 minutes during construction at 10:40 a.m on Jan. 21 using an online loudness meter. The highest number recorded was 92.7 dB, which is the equivalent of having a hair dryer, blender or power tool on in the same room.
Sherman, a construction worker at the site, has been on the job for three weeks.
“I hear it in my head,” said Sherman, whose job is to count the number of blasts per beam being installed. “I find myself counting at night when I get home from work.”
Every 100 blows sends the beam approximately one foot deeper, and the team is aiming for 100 feet total for every beam, meaning each beam requires 10,000 blasts, Sherman said.
Some residents on Columbus Avenue, which is home to seven residence halls housing Northeastern students, have decided to make light of the situation.
“We just think it’s kind of funny,” said Lexi Ledvina, a third-year cell and molecular biology major who lives on the 18th floor of LightView. “It’s very consistent, and so me and my roommates have a joke about it, like whenever we hear it we are like, ‘Guess they’re back at it again.’”
Other residents understand that construction is necessary to increase housing on campus.
“I know housing has been a consistent issue with this university,” Bricknell said. “I have friends who live in forced triples and forced doubles. At the end of the day, it will be beneficial for everyone.”
According to the City of Boston Planning Department, the residence hall will house over 1,370 beds, 500 of which will help to relocate students currently located in Northeastern-owned buildings in Fenway, in an effort to establish more affordable housing on campus.
Sherman said the building currently has an expected completion date of 2028, with pile driving hopefully concluding in February.
“Yes, [the noise] does suck, but I also understand they can’t just wait until it’s a good time for everyone,” Peterman said. “When do you expect people to build this thing if they can’t do it when you want them to do it?”
