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A development partnership is reviving the famed Great Scott nightclub at a recently-approved development in Allston that will include 139 apartments on the upper floors. Image courtesy of CambridgeSeven
Designs for mixed-use developments often include a combination of housing, retail shops and offices within a single building or complex of nearby buildings.
But a project that calls for a combination of housing and music venues? Aren’t the two incompatible, with residents’ desire for quiet conflicting with musicians’ noisy creative process?
Not necessarily, if plans for a pair of new real estate developments in Allston and Brighton come to fruition.
Two more multifamily-music venue combos are on the drawing boards in Boston – one in Allston and the other in nearby Brighton – and developers are confident they can build without any post-occupancy controversies over noise.
One is the planned revival of Allston’s legendary Great Scott music club, which closed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and never reopened.
A trio of development partners earlier this year received the city’s approval to construct a new 9-story complex, located at the corner of Cambridge and Harvard avenues. The 97,300 square-foot project would include 139 new apartments above and behind a new Great Scott club and a rebuilt O’Brien’s Pub on the same site.
After Developer Donation, BHA Seeks Proposals
Meanwhile, the Boston Housing Authority and the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture are teaming up for a multi-building project at 290 North Beacon St. in Brighton – a development that’s expected to include scores of new income-restricted apartments and a 40,000-square-foot music rehearsal center and recording studio.
The BHA and the Office of Arts & Culture are now seeking bids for a private co-developer for the proposed project, located on a site acquired as part of a mitigation process with IQHQ Inc. The life science REIT donated 290 North Beacon St. to the city in exchange for approval of development rights on another Brighton site it owns.
Officials who are separately overseeing the two projects say they’re planning to hire design experts to make sure both residents and music lovers alike live in peaceful co-existence once the projects are built.
“I’m not nervous about it at all,” said Jordan Warshaw, one of the three Great Scott development partners and president of The Noannet Group, a Boston developer known for its involvement in distinctive mixed-use projects. “In my mind, we know how to do this. We’ve done it before.”
Indeed, Warshaw said he’s been involved, during the course of his career at The Noannet Group and previously at The Druker Company, in a number of mixed-use projects that included housing and entertainment venues. One of them was the South End’s Atelier 505, with its high-end condominiums located above and adjacent to Boston Center for the Arts theaters.
“For whatever reasons, my career has involved projects with very loud venues,” said Warshaw.
The Great Scott developers plan to design their Allston complex with the assistance of Acentech, an architectural acoustics consulting firm, which has worked on a number of noise-sensitive projects over the years in Boston, including Atelier 505, Seaport Square and the Emerson Paramount Center.
Spokespeople at the BHA and Office of Arts & Culture say it’s too early in the planning process to say who they might hire for their acoustic needs. But they emphasized noise mitigation is going to be a critical component of their mixed-use design process.
“The BHA wants to ensure that this development delivers a high quality space for musicians and for future residents,” BHA spokesman Brian Jordan said in a statement. “Handling sound acoustics in order to ensure a cohesive coexistence between the music space and the housing tenants is an important functional consideration that is on our radar.”
Developers of the new Great Scott music club at 1 Harvard Ave. in Allston hired Cambridge-based architectural acoustic consultants Acentech to ensure that live performances won’t disturb residents of apartments on the upper floors. Image courtesy of CambridgeSeven
Local Scientist Pioneered Sound Abatement
So what does noise mitigation entail?
Ben Markham, president of Cambridge-based consultants Acentech, said the science of controlling noise all starts with Wallace Clement Sabine, a late 19th century physicist at Harvard University who is credited with founding the field of architectural acoustics.
Among Sabine’s most famous achievements was serving as the acoustics consultant for the design of Boston’s Symphony Hall.
“Wallace Clement Sabine was in many ways the father of our field,” Markham said. “The study of acoustics has very strong Boston roots. This is not a new science. The physics of sound haven’t suddenly changed over recent years.”
Ultimately, there are two types of noise that need to be addressed in an acoustically sensitive building project: airborne sound waves, and what’s called “structure-borne” noise that’s transmitted through solid materials, such as walls, floors, ceilings, pipe fixtures and heating vents.
The key, Markham said, is to prevent noise from transmitting from room to room, floor to floor, structure to structure. There are a number of ways to achieve sound isolation goals.
“We have some tools in our design toolbox that we regularly use” to limit sound transmission, Markham said.
Tools for Designers
Those design tools, used in combination with one another on projects, include:
Mass: Making walls, floors and foundations thicker and more capable of absorbing and reducing sound transmission.
The bottom line: doubling the mass of a sound barrier can reduce noise by approximately 6 decibels.
“The more mass there is, the more it [limits] sound” transmission, said Markham.
But Markham said developers can only add so much extra mass to a building before it becomes cost- and structurally prohibitive.
Separation: In effect, creating two structurally separate masses, with air pockets in between, further reduces the transmission of noise.
A classic example of this design tool: separate ceilings and flooring structures, with minimal contact with one another via various building fixtures that can transmit noise through vibrations.
Separating masses can often reduce decibel levels by 10 to 15 dB, Markham said.
“Ultimately, two masses are better than one,” he said. “We’re in effect interrupting the sound waves. But you have to do it right.”
Insulation: This acoustics tool entails gently stuffing “light fluffy” materials into air pockets in order further absorb sound.
Those materials can include mineral fiber, fiberglass insulation, soft cotton products and even recycled blue jeans.
No Holes: It may seem obvious, but there simply can’t be any holes leading from room to room, floor to floor.
Holes disrupt the entire concept behind separation, said Markham. Those holes are often associated with plumbing pipes, electrical conduits or heating vents.
“It might sound silly, but you have to plug all those little holes. You’ve got to do it right. They’re like water leaks. You can’t have one little noise leak.”
There are other tools and tricks to the acoustics trade designed to reduce sound, Markham said.
When you add them all together, you essentially have a “box in a box” building strategy to reduce sound transmission, Markham said.
In the end, it’s “almost impossible” to completely block every type of noise, said Markham. But designers can make it possible for people to barely notice sounds in mixed-used complexes.
“These are places where people are trying to get to sleep at night,” said Markham. “We don’t want them to wake up because of loud noises.”
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