In Burlingame, (and along the entire Peninsula,) commercial enterprises and multi-residential, mixed-use communities are rapidly rising toward the skies like giant beanstalks.

Typically, traffic and parking concerns are discussed and local leaders put policies in place to mitigate those concerns and studies are done to ensure there are no negative impacts.

However, one impact of rapid development that almost never gets addressed is the literal booming, banging, buzzing and blasting of said progress.

The source of the pile driving that begins each day at the crack of 8am and continues, like water torture, all day, everyday until 6pm emanates from the 802,837 square foot Burlingame Point, a massive project on the former drive-in movie site that has been in some form of development for years. The project, according to its project manager, requires at least 2000 piles to be driven. Why did no one associated with this project over the course of all those years anticipate the disruption this could cause on residents just across form the projects location and nearby hotels and businesses like Virgin America and others?

Cities have ordinances in place to regulate decibel levels on house parties and leaf blowers but pile driving, deep-well drilling, jack-hammering, earth moving, grading, grinding and the constant beep, beep, beeping of trucks backing up are not regulated in any way.

Our once quite suburbs are no longer places of relaxation in bucolic backyard hammocks, napping to the chirping of finches. We live now in a place where we realize the wake-up calls of bulldozers and backhoes.

Some might say, grin and bear it. It will come to end with the 2000^th pile driven.

Caltrain has just announce that their electrification/modernization project will begin shortly with 24 hour per day work along the railroad tracks. The 290 unit Summerhill project slated for Carolan Drive has not yet begun, the 260,000 square feet SFO Tech Center just got the thumbs up from Burlingame’s planning commission and there are many other numerous multi-story office and mixed use projects, not to mention the continuing demolition of two-bedroom homes into five-bedroom, six-bath open concept, mini-mansions that will continue to hum along well after the Burlingame Point project has been completed years from now.

I am not here to debate the merits of the current building boom.

Burlingame’s general plan allows for development that is concentrated on the east side. I am not here to debate the merits of the general plan either. When development happens in an aggressive and rapid pace in a concentrated area it becomes problematic.

My hope is that the noise from our booming economy becomes an issue that gets the same devoted attention in the environmental review process that other impacts of development get today.

My hope is that our elected officials, (who live primarily on the West side of town, away from the daily “grind,”) understand the burden on those who live on the East side of town.

I simply suggest we get ahead of the curve and address the noise issue now before we are tortured by it over and over again.