The Swissotel Metropole in Geneva recently finished another part of its multi-phase restoration project. This gorgeous Swiss hotel features dozens of magnificent rooms completed with a gorgeous urban decor.
Inside, however, you’ll be pleased to find that renovations included the addition of some of the best soundproofing materials on the market between each room. Now you can enjoy the urban environment in the stunning Swiss Alps without worrying about what’s going on in the room next door!
At age 72, Elli Fordyce is making a name for herself as an accomplished jazz singer. Fordyce started singing more than 40 years ago but gave up singing for a brief period of time after an automobile accident. Years later, inspired by her trusty puppy, she began singing again- and has never stopped.
Fordyce broke back into the world of singing after scraping enough money to buy time in a recording studio near her home in Yonkers. The studio was very small and, ridiculously, had blankets and coats hung as soundproofing.
This year Elli was considered in the pre-nominations for 13 Grammy categories. She didn’t make it into the nominations this year but we have a feeling we’ll be hearing more from her soon.
The Houghton Portage High School has been undergoing renovations for what seems like forever. This month, though, the students were honored to open their brand new wing – the result of a $10 million improvement project.
The new wing includes a number of incredible features. Amongst them are a new gym, tons of technological equipment, and a state of the art music room with plenty of soundproofing.
The project will save the school more than $3 million in utilities over the next decade!
Here’s a complaint you don’t get too often. Organizers working on events for the 2010 Olympic events are getting complaints. There are dozens of generators planted around the B.C. Place building, the site where the opening ceremonies will be held.
One of the generators recently began running on a regular basis, making it’s existence well known to neighbors in nearby condo units.
The good news is that as soon as the Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee heard about the disturbance and complaints they took immediate action. They’ve already released a statement announcing their intentions to soundproof the generators.
Thank goodness!
The president of the RAIC (Rhode Island Airport Corporation) is working on a new project. Instead of soundproofing homes near the Green Airport they want to acquire them. That way they can tear them down and expand their runways.
Alright – that’s not exactly fair. They do want to soundproof some of the homes. They’ll have to once their runways extend into a new neighborhood. They can’t purchase all of the homes around the airport, right?
The entire plan will cost more than $67 million and, if approved, the FAA will contribute $55 million.
The continuation of the project will depend on whether or not the FAA forecasts traffic at the airport with a potential to increase. If they do determine traffic is increasing, the home owners near the plotted runway may have no choice. What’s that called? Emminent domain?
The General Treasurer in charge of handling requests for reimbursement after a judge awarded a $176 million settlement to victims of the Station fire caused by poor soundproofing in 2003 asked for help resolving an ethical dispute. A law firm owned by some of his family members represents more than 40 of the victims and he thought there might be conflict when he was awarding disbursement checks.
The Rhode Island Ethics Commission stepped in and gave Caprio specific instructions and deemed him capable of completing the task with no question of unethical behavior.
What can we say? It’s politics. At least he asked!
The city of Paceville is unique. Right now city law states that bars and clubs are allowed to stay open until the wee hours of the morning – until 4am, to be exact.
Compared to many other cities in the country, Paceville bars have a pretty lax time schedule. Most other areas require their bars to close by 1 or 2 am.
But this year things may change. Bars are pushing even the 4am curfew, forcing authorities to take action and make sure they close on time. Most don’t have soundproofing and neighbors are beginning to complain.
So will things change? Only time will tell but if neighbors have anything to say about it local bars won’t be playing music until 4am much longer.
For several years the folks at the Sonoma Academy of Dance and Art have been hosting special events under the assumption that a permit from a previous owner had transferred to them. In April of 2009, however, a new neighbor moved in behind the school and was unhappy by the noise coming from the rear of his home. He even complained about the sound of children laughing.
The neighbor defends himself by saying he only ever called police during the summer months when there were 9 receptions over a three month period. Township officials finally did enough research to realize the academy didn’t have permits for those events.
Now the school, with no soundproofing and not enough ample parking, has to apply for a special events permit – and for just those rasons, it was denied. They plan to go up before city council again soon but will the decision be reversed? Only time will tell.
Toyota will be responding to the changing economy by launching a budget car in the coming year. The car, called the Etios, will be launched in India first at an automobile show in New Dehli.
Toyota plans to make two models, a notchback and a hatchback. The notchback will be manufactured first, on a small scale, and if things go well the hatchback wll be introduced later.
The cost for this economy car? Only $10,000 (or $6,000 pounds).
And there’s the rub. What features do you lose when you create such an economically priced car? Soundproofing will be at a minimum, a point that disappointed us. And you’ll only have one front windshield wiper blade. Go figure.
Here’s a new one. There’s a plan in the air that involves some modernization work to the Franklin Fields baseball are near the Harvard-Westlake School. The Army Corps of Engineers has used the diamond, located in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area, for more than 25 years.
The thing is, they’re not just talking about fixing up the dugouts and laying down some new sod. They’re talking about adding new seating, planting shrubs to help discourage graffiti artists and – we like this part best – they want to build a soundproof batting cage.
Who needs a sound proof batting cage for practice?
We’ll be very interested in seeing which parts of this project actually move forward, though we do hope the field receives some sort of renovation.