Rock Sportsplex Sound Study Underway, Finally

After years of citizen complaints, a sound study at The Rock Sportsplex and Ballpark Commons in Franklin is finally underway.

When Milwaukee County agreed to sell the former Crystal Ridge Landfill to the developers of the Rock Sportsplex in 2017, the agreement stipulated that a sound study would be conducted to ensure the nearby residents were not impacted by the massive project which included plans to build a minor-league baseball stadium. But the study was never performed.

The developers, ROC Ventures, inked another agreement with the City of Franklin that did not include a sound study requirement. As the local municipality, enforcement of sound regulations falls to the city and its police department. What’s more, Franklin officials also amended their city’s noise limits to allow a maximum level of 79 decibels. This level of noise is within a hair of falling within a sound range that can cause hearing loss with sustained exposure, according to academics in Yale’s Environmental Health and Safety Department.

Nearby residents have complained about the noise to Franklin officials for years, to no avail. In 2019, Mayor Frank Olson wrote a letter to Chairwoman of the County Board Marcelia Nicholson denying that noise was an issue at the ballpark. Franklin eventually made some measurements of sound around the stadium, but had no way of interpreting the data they collected.

Eventually, in order to have concrete information that Franklin and Milwaukee County policymakers can rely on, the county contracted Resource Systems Group Inc., based in Hartford, VT to perform a sound study.

In September, Dana Lodico, a senior director at RSG, informed the county board’s Committee on Audit that the sound study was underway, but that the owners of the Rock have not let them onto the property to install equipment to measure the sound. Shortly before the last game of the season for the Milwaukee Milkmen, Lodico explained that Roc Ventures had not yet agreed to let them monitor sound on the property during a game.

So far, RSG has installed three nearby monitors that have continuously collected data for approximately six months. They’ve also performed attended monitorings, which involve technicians being present at the site to monitor data as events are taking place. RSG did not inform the Rock when it would be monitoring events, Lodico clarified.

Because of the significant amount of data, Lodico expects it will take approximately six months to analyze before a final report can be made. Though, she said, there will be intermediate reports during that time.

The sound study is being conducted in part due to the work of former Supervisor John Weishan, Jr., who sponsored the first resolution and secured the first approvals from his colleagues for the project. Weishan lost in his spring bid for re-election.

Sup. Kathleen Vincent noted at the September meeting of the audit committee that regardless of the outcome of the sound study, the county does not have the enforcement power over local nuisances, like sound, that Franklin has. She said she would like if county policymakers could “sit down with the owner and see if we can come up with some kind of an agreement.”

“I live a mile and a half away,” Vincent said. “It doesn’t bother me, but knowing that I’m hearing it a mile and half away, I definitely believe there are real concerns about the noise for those people living in the closest proximity to it.”

Supervisor Steve Taylor is the executive director of the ROC Foundation, the non-profit arm of ROC Ventures. Taylor previously served as both a county supervisor and a Franklin alderman as the Rock development project went before both governments for key approvals and financing.