Earplugs are the New Amenity at the Millenium Hotel

By Nick Pinto
POSTED FEBRUARY 1, 2008

Visiting New York from London last month, James Hertford was counting on a good night’s sleep before a busy round of business meetings the next day.

But after checking into the Millenium Hilton hotel, across Church Street from the World Trade Center site, Hertford found sleep hard to come by.

“It was one of the noisiest nights I can remember,” Hertford said. “And it just kept going. It didn’t get quiet until after midnight, and it seemed like I had hardly gone to sleep when it started up again before six in the morning.”

Hertford isn’t the only guest to find the long hours of construction noise from the site disturbing.

“It’s a real challenge for us,” said Jan Larsen, the Millenium’s general manager. “The ability to sleep is what we’re in the business of selling. We have 569 guest rooms, and 480 of them face Ground Zero. When you have construction work going late into the night and starting early in the morning, that’s a problem for our guests and for us.”

Larsen said his hotel has asked the Port Authority to scale back its workdays, or at least limit the noisiest work to daylight hours, but to no avail. Instead, he said, he has bought more than 100 white noise machines, at about $100 a piece, for guests use.

The hotel is also trying a more low-tech solution, offering guests complimentary earplugs in their rooms.

Even with these measures, though, the noise is too much for some people.

“We still get complaints. We have people who check out and ask for rebates,” Larsen said. “We try to appease them with complimentary breakfast or cocktails, or by reducing their room rate. But you don’t know what effect it’s going to have over the long term. This is hurting our business, but there’s no way to really calculate how much.”

Residential neighbors of the World Trade Center site have been complaining for months of the relentless work schedule and shattering din of the construction site. They were mollified somewhat last month when the Port Authority announced it will be taking steps to reduce the noise.

Under pressure from the community and elected officials, the Port Authority agreed last month to adopt a six-point noise-reduction program, including the installation of sound barriers on Liberty Street, the use of jackhammer covers and quieter back-up alarms on trucks, and an effort to restrict the noisiest work to daytime hours. Perhaps most significantly, the agency agreed to pay for the installation of noise-reducing windows for residences within 100 feet of the site, up to $1,200 per window.

 “We’re very pleased to be able to do this for the community,” Port Authority spokesman Glenn Guzzi told Community Board 1 last month. “There may be times when we will need to keep working long hours, but these steps should help minimize the impact on neighbors.”

Unfortunately for the Millenium Hilton, non-residential buildings will not be eligible. “It’s still a big problem,” Millenium executive Stuart Yule told the Port Authority officials at the meeting. “How are you going to compensate us?”

[Home][Back][Search] [Advertise][Contact]
The Tribeca Trib · 401 Broadway, 5th Floor · New York, NY · 10013 · 212.219.9709