Lab Mice Catch Break From Jackhammer Ruckus

Based on a complaint that jackhammers are threatening the tranquility of laboratory mice, the housing authority has agreed to spend an extra $22,000 to speed up demolition of a public-housing tower on Howard Avenue.

The housing authority struck the deal last week with the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), which runs experiments with laboratory mice right across the street from the demolition site.

The housing authority began in October tearing down the William T. Rowe building, an old cement senior high-rise at 904 Howard, as part of a land swap with Yale-New Haven Hospital. The authority moved Rowe tenants to a new housing development at 33 Sylvan Ave. on land once owned by the hospital. In return, it agreed to tear down 904 Howard and turn over the property to the hospital by Dec. 31 of this year.

For the past two weeks, Standard Demolition has been breaking up the building’s foundation with a ​“hoe-ram,” a large machine-operated jackhammer. (Click on the video above for a sample.)

The hammering has been so forceful that it shakes the floor of Gennaro’s Apizza Cafe, said baker Ilyas Uzun. The shop sits at the corner of Sylvan and Howard, right across the street from the demolition site.

Uzun (pictured) wasn’t the only one disturbed by the vibrations. The housing authority got a call last week from CMHC concerned that the noise would bother the mice in its laboratories, according to Jimmy Miller, second-in-command of the housing authority.

Miller said the demolition job has been difficult. The foundation is made up of ​“huge” footings, blocks of concrete each weighing ​“a couple of tons.” The housing authority had two options, he said: ​“blow them up” or break them apart with jackhammers. Using explosives would have been quicker, but would have required permits that would have delayed the project, Miller said. So the housing authority decided to stick with the jackhammers.

The housing authority acted quickly on CMHC’s complaint: At its board meeting last Thursday, commissioners voted to speed up demolition to lessen the noise. That will require demo crews to work overtime hours for roughly two weeks to get the job done, Miller estimated. Workers will extend their workday from eight to 12 hours, he said. That in turn will speed up remaining demolition by two to four weeks, he said, costing the housing authority an extra $22,000 in overtime costs.

“That’ll lessen the time the mice are subjected to noise,” Miller said.

The situation elicited chuckles from the housing authority board and audience as commissioners approved the action by a unanimous vote.

“This is what we call being a good community partner,” noted commissioner Matt Short.

So far, the mice have survived without adverse effects, according to Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart.

“We are aware of the intermittent vibrations that have been occurring over the last 2 – 3 weeks and have been monitoring these animals multiple times a day,” she wrote in an email. ​“Although rodents can be sensitive to vibration, to date we have not noticed any impact on the animals, meaning that we have not had to modify our care of them, have not observed any behavioral changes, including breeding, and have not observed any research that has had to be modified or cancelled because of the Howard Avenue work.”

She said CMHC contacted the housing authority ​“in order to come up with a solution to prevent prolonged vibrations because research rodents can be sensitive to vibration.” In the request, she said, ​“there was equal concern for people who worked at CMHC who were being affected by the vibrations. While the animals weren’t harmed, the risk of jeopardizing experiments was a concern.”

Peart said the animals at CMHC are ​“exclusively rodents.” They are used in research psychiatric disorders. CMHC’s research ​“has led to innovative clinical programming including initiatives aimed at the early detection and specialized treatment of individuals with psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. CMHC brain research has identified new ways to treat depression, schizophrenia, and substance use disorders, including an antidepressant that may shorten response times from several weeks to several hours.”

Miller said the agreement with CMHC is the latest effort the housing authority has made to accommodate neighbors at the site, which sits on a busy thoroughfare at the edge of Yale’s medical campus.

When the housing authority first looked at tearing down 904 Howard, he said, it considered using a wrecking ball to knock down the first six stories of the 16-story building. ​“That was going to be an enormous amount of vibration,” however, so the housing authority agreed to do the job by hand. Instead of swinging a ball with a crane, workers painstakingly ​“saw-cut” the building piece by piece, as if they were taking apart an Erector Set, Miller said. 

The earth-shaking hoe-ramming should last only another two weeks, Miller said. Then the housing authority plans to remove all the debris, cover the site with blacktop, and turn it over to Yale by the end of the year.

Pizza-maker Uzun, who has asthma, welcomed an end to the demolition. He said the worst part has been the dust, which blew into the air so heavily at one point that it left a thick layer of silt on his car.

“That dust is killing us,” he said.

CMHC declined a reporter’s request to photograph, or interview, the mice.