Perlo Construction, the general contractor hired to build the new, 530,000 square foot home of Columbia Distributing’s Portland metro area operations in the Canby industrial park, has been granted a noise variance that will allow them to pour concrete starting at 3 a.m. on weekdays throughout the summer and fall.
The city’s noise ordinance would normally prohibit construction activities before 7 a.m., but Columbia’s new beverage warehouse and distribution facility is not a normal development. Easily the largest building in town, the new facility sits on 43 acres and will be about two and a half times the size of the Canby Fred Meyer store.
It kind of goes without saying but that’s a lot of concrete. Here’s Perlo’s site supervisor on the project discussing the matter with Canby Mayor Brian Hodson at the Canby City Council meeting last week.
The supervisor explained that the noise variance was needed not just to give his crews more hours in the day to work on the massive project, but because the early morning is a much better time to lay and begin working with wet cement than after the sun has risen and the heat of the day has settled in.
Because the site is so large, and many of its neighbors are farms or other industrial users like Canby Excavating, he said he hopes the impact on residents will be minimal.
Perlo has promised that those some 2,200 cement trucks visiting the Project Shakespeare site over the course of its construction will not access the property from SE First Avenue, which would take them by a number of area homes, but will instead use South Walnut Road, which serves only industrial properties and farms.
The route change has already made a difference: Residents who attended last week’s meeting planning to oppose the noise variance changed their minds after hearing the trucks would not be using First Avenue.
The noise variance will take effect on June 24 and remain active through Dec. 6.
