Stadium noise study comes under fire

Residents who live closest to Columbia’s new baseball stadium Monday blasted a long-awaited noise study for its failure to test how much sound would come from concerts and fireworks, not just games.

The study also did not evaluate crowd noise.

The study — by Wrightson, Johnson Haddon & Williams, the consulting firm that designed the stadium’s sound system — found professional baseball games at the $37 million publicly funded stadium will not create excessive noise.

No one among the 25 people who met at the Earlewood Park community center to hear and respond to the findings of noise and lighting studies seemed to agree with the consultants’ assertions.

“We’re being asked to swallow a study when we know there are going to be substantially noisier events,” said Josh McDuffie, who lives in the adjacent Cottontown neighborhood. “I would say that is a very incomplete study from the point of view of someone who lives 800 feet away.”

McDuffie worries about post-game fireworks waking his young children. Plans are to set off fireworks at about half of the 70 home games of the Columbia Fireflies minor-league baseball team, which starts play in mid-April, assistant city manager Missy Gentry told the gathering.

Gentry said plans are to hold three to four concerts during the stadium’s first year of operation. That number is projected to grow to six to 10 a year, she said.

Mara Clemons was irritated by city employees and City Council members saying the stadium was designed to minimize its impact on surrounding neighborhoods.

“There was no consideration (of neighborhood concerns),” said Clemons, who has relatives who live along the Harden Street side of the Bull Street neighborhood that is just beginning to develop around the stadium.

“I’m out!” she said, her voice rising with indignation.

Elizabeth Marks, a leader in the Robert Mills Historic District neighborhood, said the studies appear to be justifications for decisions the city has made in designing and building the ballpark, which can hold about 8,500 fans a game.

The two-hour discussion about the noise study also resurfaced long-held resentments about the contracts the city signed to build the stadium as well as the public commitment to the 165-acre Bull Street complex before noise, lighting and traffic studies were completed.

“We have felt disenfranchised by the process for some time,” said Kirk Foster, vice president of the Cottontown neighborhood organization.

Four members of City Council – a majority – attended the meeting. Council members Tameika Isaac Devine and Sam Davis said they support conducting more in-depth studies and perhaps a citywide ban on fireworks shows at public events. Council is to get a report on the studies during its Tuesday meeting.

McDuffie reflected the skepticism in the room. “Why should be trust council now when you didn’t get it done the first time?”

Emily Piersol, the senior designer for the San Antonio-based firm that did the sound study, told the group that the stadium’s high-end speaker system directs sound into the facility. Ten large speakers will be mounted on the ballpark’s nine 90-foot light poles. None will be higher than 50 feet up. An additional 30 speakers are embedded in the stadium’s structure around its concourse, she said.

“Crowd noise was not included as a source in our (computer) model,” Piersol wrote in a July 17, 2015, letter to representatives of the Fireflies team, which will be the primary user of the stadium.

Piersol said her firm’s analysis is a “conservative prediction” of the volume of noise that will come from the stadium. The study only took into account buffering from existing buildings that surround the ballpark, she wrote. As more construction occurs around the ballpark, sound will be shielded more, she added.

Hardball Capital, which will operate the stadium under a long-term agreement with the city, paid for the $7,500 noise study, said Gregory Tucker, the city’s project director for the stadium and the Bull Street development. Tucker did not know immediately how much the lighting study cost but said it was paid for by the partnership of private companies that is overseeing construction of the stadium.

Some in Monday’s audience complained the noise study was finished last summer but is only now being released for public comment.

The lighting study drew far less attention.

Barry Jones of Musco Lighting said the stadium is equipped with state-of-the-art lights that have visors to focus light beams onto the field. Musco’s study found that light would be barely discernible 1,000 feet from the light poles.

The closest homes to the stadium are 1,100 feet to 1,400 feet from the outer stadium structure, Jones said.

“We could pretty safely say that the lighting will have very little impact in those neighborhoods,” Jones said. “They may not be even able to tell they’re on.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2016 at 9:11 PM with the headline "Stadium noise study comes under fire."