Four individuals living near the site of Kernersville’s planned community pool spoke at a public hearing at last week’s Board of Aldermen meeting to address plans for early-morning construction.
The residents raised concerns about noise, noting that they had been told upcoming concrete pours at the Etta Lea and Lawrence Pope Memorial Park site could begin as early as 2:30 a.m. and last roughly 12 hours.
One resident of the adjacent McConnell neighborhood said the construction site is approximately 20 to 30 feet from residents’ homes, asserting that the project has already been a source of “constant noise and disruption.”
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She asked if the town could intervene to push back the start of the concrete pour until 8 a.m., even if it meant work would continue later into the evening.
Another resident with property that backs up to the pool site said residents were initially unaware that there would be more than one concrete pour days and similarly questioned why the first pour could not begin later in the morning.
“I would like for you all to be there with us at 2:30 in the morning for the duration of the setup and the pour so you all can get a firsthand account of what is going on behind our homes,” she told town officials.
She went on to address privacy concerns about the ongoing construction and questioned whether planned landscaping would be sufficient to address the noise from a public pool.
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A third resident said their “lives have been turned upside down” because of the construction, adding that it has caused her house to shake and made it difficult to concentrate.
Another issue raised by the fourth speaker dealt with local children who will have to attend school following the early-morning construction, concluding: “That just doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Timing isn’t the town’s choice
Town Manager Curtis Swisher told the board that the timing of the pour is largely dictated by the contractor based on the requirements of the project, including the size of the pour, concrete delivery, curing, temperature, humidity, wind, sunlight, and precipitation.
“These size pours are always done early in the morning,” Swisher said. “Either that or they start late at night and they run through 4 a.m. until the next afternoon.”
In this case, he said the contractor has told the town that the pour needs to happen at the scheduled time.
“I would like nothing more than to be able to tell these people we’ll start it at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m.,” he said, but warned that forcing the contractor to change the schedule would put the town at significant financial risk should the pour go wrong as a result.
Swisher also noted that the plan had changed from what residents might have initially heard, explaining that three separate 12-hour pours had been reduced to one overnight pour and one daytime pour.
As of the time of his remarks, he said the contractor planned to meet at the site at 3 a.m. and begin pouring about two hours later.
In response to requests for noise-abatement measures such as acoustic panels, Swisher said the town had asked the contractor about such options but had not yet received an answer.
Defending the pool’s location
The discussion also touched on a larger question that has followed the project since its inception: Why Pope Park?
Swisher explained that the location had been discussed at length by the Board of Aldermen, though he acknowledged that some residents have said they had not been aware of those discussions.
He defended the use of Lambeth Farm Lane as the access route to the pool, saying that the road was originally intended to be a thoroughfare and is therefore wider. The town estimates that the pool will generate about 260 vehicles per day during the roughly three-and-a-half months it is expected to be open each year, with peak traffic of about 23 vehicles per hour in the morning and 26 in the afternoon.
“The traffic is not going to be an issue,” Swisher said.
Alderman Bill Apple emphasized accessibility and walkability as major factors in deciding the pool’s location near the greenway. He said other potential locations presented their own challenges and that Pope Park had been chosen unanimously by the previous board, on which he also served.
Apple assured residents that the board was not “casting a deaf hear” to their “human issues” and that aldermen “are not numb to the real-life concerns that a project like this imposes” on those living nearby.
At the same time, he said the town had researched the construction process and concluded that the early-morning schedule was not unusual for such a project.
While the residents who spoke said they understood the construction must continue, they asked the town to work with the contractor to minimize the disruption where possible.
As one put it: “We’re asking for what we consider reasonable consideration.”
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