A silent night is what some residents near Cates Park are asking for this Christmas season, but all is not calm as overnight construction at a nearby development is keeping them awake.
Scraping metal noises, backup beeping from trucks and general construction clamour reverberated through the still night air starting around 10 p.m. on Nov. 26, according to multiple residents who live near the new Cates Landing development on the Dollarton Highway waterfront.
“I was just astounded was probably the main reaction I had,” said Gary McAllindon, who lives in a subdivision across the street from the construction site. “You are checking your watch and going, ‘What time is it?’”
McAllindon said he thought at most the construction would carry on until midnight. Instead, right up until 6 a.m. he heard the hollow clanging sound of large rocks and debris being loaded into empty dump trucks.
“It’s so maddening,” said McAllindon, adding, his daughter missed half a day of high school because she didn’t sleep much either. “How does someone get permission to run construction from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the morning in a residential area? It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
McAllindon’s next-door neighbour, Dave Atchison, was also disturbed by the ruckus coming from Cates Landing, a waterfront townhouse and condo complex being built by Polygon Homes. “It’s rocks being dumped, the buckets of these excavators being dragged around, and then the constant beep, beep, beep (from the trucks),” described Atchison.
The following night the loud construction noise returned, once again waking up the neighbourhood, in a cycle repeated four nights in a row. There is a short reprieve, for now, until overnight construction picks up again for seven days starting Dec. 10.
Polygon warned residents about the construction schedule, sending out a newsletter to 40 neighbours living near the site, according to the company’s president, Neil Chrystal. “We knew it would be an inconvenience,” he said.
As a condition for redevelopment of the old Dollarton Shipyard site, located on Port Metro Vancouver property, Polygon agreed to clean up the heavily polluted foreshore. However, the cleanup of the contaminated soil can only be done during low tide, which occurs overnight at this time of the year.
Port Metro Vancouver signed off on Polygon’s request in mid-November for the nighttime work, on the condition they submit a noise mitigation plan. Polygon did some daytime decibel testing at six spots near the site in September and recorded levels ranging between 55 to 71 decibels.
The nearby Raven Woods neighbourhood was not initially included on Polygon’s construction memo mailing list, but now is because some of those residents had sleepless nights. “It echoes through Burrard Inlet, you know how the water carries the noise,” said Raven Woods resident Luzia Wietschorke. “It’s a lot to ask thousands of people to endure this at night.”
Polygon offered to give affected residents custom-fit earplugs, said Chrystal. So far four people have taken the company up on that offer, but not Atchison.
“You have got to be kidding me,” said Atchison. “That wasn’t their willingness to resolve the noise; that was their way of dealing with the complaint.”
Atchison complained to Polygon, Port Metro Vancouver and the District of North Vancouver, on behalf of his sleepy neighbours. District spokesperson Jeanine Bratina said because the work is on federal land, municipal noise bylaws don’t apply.
Port Metro Vancouver spokesperson Jennifer Hunt said they received reports of nighttime construction noise near Cates Landing, and have asked Polygon to submit a revised noise mitigation plan before the next phase of work begins.
“It’s very difficult for us to mitigate the construction activity noise, because obviously it’s construction activity,” said Chrystal, adding, they might limit the number of machines at night, but nothing has been finalized.
Polygon hopes to have the foreshore remediation work completed on Dec. 17. If not, crews will have to come in again overnight from Jan. 6 to 9.
