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Keep it down over there!
The Millenium Hilton has filed suit — claiming the construction across the street to rebuild the World Trade Center is just too darn loud!
Never mind that touting the proximity to Ground Zero is part of the hotel’s marketing plan, and that the hotel is sold out for the 9/11 10-year anniversary weekend.
Ground Zero tourists can’t stand the 16 to 20 hours a day of banging and clanging, despite the hotel’s installation of 200 “white-noise machines” and the complimentary earplugs that guests are offered upon check-in, the suit alleges.
The 569-unit, 55-story hotel “has lost hundreds of nights’ worth of business in a single month due to customers relocating after one night of enduring noise, including the blasting of rock, and physical vibrations resulting from the construction,” says the suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“It’s pretty noisy,” tourist Susan Tucker, 39, of Toronto, agreed yesterday.
“I just checked in, and I took note of how noisy it was right away,” she said. “I’m on the 42nd floor, and I face the site. But I do have to say that I knew how close it was when I booked the hotel.”
So far, she said, she planned to stay, although she hadn’t tried sleeping there yet.
Over the past five years, the blasting, clanging and rumbling across Church Street has routinely gone on past midnight, says the suit, which is seeking $8 million in damages from the Port Authority, which owns the site, and Silverstein Properties Inc., the developer of Towers 2, 3 and 4.
Excavation and construction goes on “virtually every day,” gripes the hotel, often lasting “late into the night and early-morning hours.
“The construction activities have included hoe ramming, rock blasting and the dumping of large rocks and construction debris into Dumpsters.”
The hotel had been seriously damaged by the 9/11 attacks, but reopened in the spring of 2003, “quickly regaining its market share and re-establishing itself as the leading hotel in downtown Manhattan,” the suit says.
But the construction noise began in earnest only in 2006, the suit says — and so, too, did the rampant cancellations by individual guests and groups, including the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Platts and Goldman Sachs.
“It isn’t as bad as it was in the beginning, when they were doing the foundation,” said Jim Davis, 47, of North Carolina, a Goldman Sachs employee who’s sticking it out.
“Now, they’re breaking up concrete, so there’s a lot of drilling.”
Silverstein Properties spokesman Bud Perrone said the company “is committed to being a good neighbor in the downtown community.”
“Everything we do adheres to applicable codes,” he said. “Our World Trade Center construction operations take place during regular business hours, rather than at night.”
The company insists construction at the site is halted from 6 p.m. to the following morning.
Representatives of the hotel declined to comment. The Port Authority did not return calls.
The Millenium Hilton says noisy construction activity is costing it business.
The racket includes:
* Jackhammering
* Hoe ramming
* Rock blasting
* Dumping of large rocks and debris into Dumpsters
To compensate, the hotel offers guests:
* Earplugs
* White-noise machines