123 Main Street is restaurant on the ground floor and luxury apartments above—tenants complained of noise during peak business hours, customers about the noisy dining room at all times. Alchemy Properties finally found the solution to this problem with the expertise provided by ASC.
The Solution
The large panels are inset with a grid of sibilance reflecting strips so the panels do not sound overly dead when directly overhead. The color was Silver Papier, which looks just like a shadow on a white ceiling. The panel/mounting system was carefully packed onto a pallet and shipped factory direct to the restaurant. The pattern was designed to be adjusted during installation to accommodate the variety of equipment located on the ceiling.
From Gary Schotland, Owner
Dear ASC,Last fall, based on your design recommendations, my brother & I purchased about 36 ceiling panels for a restaurant in our building in New Jersey.
People now constantly remark about how quiet the space is, but not unnaturally so.
I wanted to send you some photos of the space so you can see how well they blend in. Installation with the z-clips was a breeze. And of course they provide just the right amount of damping. Our tenant has gotten lots of positive comments about how nice the panels look and how pleasant the dining room is acoustically.
Our motivations for managing sound level in our tenant’s restaurant dining space were two-fold. Patrons of better quality restaurants expect a pleasant atmosphere which includes being able to have a relaxed conversation with people at your table. A room full of hard surfaces made this impossible and the atmosphere unpleasant to the point that it was detrimental to our previous tenant’s business. People now constantly remark about how quiet the space is, but not unnaturally so; the level of damping is just right.
Now that the panels are in place we have no more complaints.
Above the restaurant are luxury apartments. Keeping the peace in a mixed use building is often challenging. In spite of a number of expensive solutions aimed at minimizing transmission of sound from the restaurant dining room, including special drywall, our tenants upstairs still complained of noise at peak business hours. Unhappy apartment tenants can quickly translate into greater turnover, more vacancy, lower rents, lower cash flow and ultimately lower property value. Now that the panels are in place we have no more complaints. The panels, while not inexpensive, pay for themselves very quickly if the landlord considers the big picture.
Thanks for doing an excellent job helping us devise the most cost effective, aesthetically pleasing solution for our space.
—Gary Schotland
Alchemy Properties LLC
Flemington, NJ
