City Council members set to consider alternate solutions to
decreasing area decibel levels
Gilroy – The tunnel of towering concrete slabs along northern Santa Teresa Boulevard will not creep farther south to separate future homes from passing traffic. Nor will city leaders allow soundwalls to slink north.
Next month, city council will review two plans to offset noise pollution along Gilroy’s western traffic artery, and both plans involve solutions that lower decibel levels without sacrificing views.
“It’s our goal to have no soundwalls along Santa Teresa,” said Tim Filice, representative for the biggest housing development in the city’s history. The 1,700-home Glen Loma Ranch project in southwest Gilroy is already going before council in stages. The first phase, the 162-unit Vista Bella neighborhood which lies south of 10th Street and directly borders Santa Teresa, relies on a combination of measures to eliminate soundwalls.
A walking trail, frontage road and front yards will provide a 90-foot buffer between the homes and Santa Teresa Boulevard. Windows will have triple-paned glass to reduce noise, and Glen Loma Group has designed the homes so that “active” living and recreation areas, such as bedrooms and the yard, lie at the rear of the house, farthest away from passing traffic.
On future phases of the project, which will build out over the next decade, the developers will mix up the scenery while still dampening sound with shrubs and trees, man-made hills known as berms, and other landscaping and architectural techniques.
It’s no accident the approaches exemplify alternatives city leaders approved as part of a 2003 soundwall policy. Filice was among a handful of task force members who crafted the policies. Now his cousin and partner at Glen Loma Group, John Filice, has adopted similar ideas to win back trust on council.
In February, city leaders chastised John Filice for including soundwalls – albeit broken up in points by fencing – as part of designs for Rancho Hills, a 107-unit project on the northwest corner of Santa Teresa Boulevard and Sunrise Drive.
“I think that what might be missing is that somehow people haven’t gotten the message that soundwalls are a last resort, unless there’s no other way to mitigate the effects of traffic,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said in an interview.
John Filice was unavailable for comment, but project engineer John Donahoe said Glen Loma has come up with a design that he believes council will favor.
“We’re proposing a hybrid of Vista Bella, with the homes facing out onto Santa Teresa Boulevard,” Donahoe said.
Rather than soundwalls, the developers will space homes 20 to 70 feet from the road and use similar designs as in Glen Loma, where “you’re actually using the front of the home as part of the sound attenuation,” Donahoe explained.
He said Rancho Hills could not incorporate landscaping, a major noise reduction technique used in Glen Loma, because it is too late to create a home owners association. The vast majority of the multi-phase Rancho Hills project is already built out and developers are unwilling to tax current residents through an HOA to finance tree pruning and other basic landscaping for nine new homes that will face Santa Teresa.
“In Glen Loma, we had adequate time to create policies,” Donahoe said. “That’s different than north Santa Teresa, where we’re the last piece of the puzzle.”
City leaders will decide in coming weeks if noise reduction plans for both projects are acceptable.
While innovative solutions may help the city avoid new soundwalls along Santa Teresa Boulevard, it is too late for a mile-long stretch of the road.
“The bottom line is,” Pinheiro said, “if we had been doing this from day one, we wouldn’t have the tunnel effect that we have now.”
Study sessions
What: Council members will review plans to eliminate the need for soundwalls along Santa Teresa Boulevard, south of First Street.
When: May 22 at 6pm
Where: Council Chambers, 7351 Rosanna St.
Before the soundwall …
The city ranks soundwalls as the last option for reducing noise pollution from traffic. Here’s the list of options:
Set home farther back from roadway
Orient “active” living/recreation areas away from road
Utilize natural topography as a buffer
Plant trees or bushes as buffers
Create berms (man-made hills)
Combine a berm and a low-profile wall
Build a frontage road
Soundwall
