Earlier this week, the State College Borough Council unanimously approved a noise waiver request that would allow Penn State to use amplified sound on a proposed permanent stage on the HUB lawn.

The waiver, which was originally met with uncertainty earlier this year, will allow Penn State to use amplified sound at six events a year, on either a Friday or Saturday evening from dusk until midnight.

Council members were originally concerned about increased noise levels in the surrounding neighborhoods because of the redesign of the HUB lawn, which will position a new stage, facing downtown.

Office of Physical Plant spokesman Paul Ruskin said the goal is to begin and complete construction this summer. The addition of a terrace on the north side of the lawn below the current patio area will also serve as a stage for concerts and speakers, he said.

"The HUB is a very important gathering spot so we would hope that the new terrace would facilitate more activities, and these activities would range from additional areas for students to sit at a table and do their homework, to a public presentation area," he said.

Ruskin said the university has had difficulty with the old staging area at the bottom of the HUB lawn because it is not easy to access utilities like electricity at the south end of the lawn.

"The end of the lawn is not a good place to act as a staging area," he said. "Whenever you have a major event, you have unloading of speakers and increased activity and that area is not really designed to host an event.

Ruskin said utilities like electrical outlets and audio components will be built directly into the terrace.

Ruskin said in addition to the new terrace, changes in lighting, landscaping and lawn gradient will be made to the HUB lawn.

"We have an occasional difficulty with water drainage on the lawn, and it creates a potentially muddy situation," he said.

Council member Cathy Dauler said the noise waiver passed unanimously at the recent meeting because of previous workshops with Stan Latta, senior director of unions and student activities at Penn State, to discuss issues like the time of concerts and decibel level.

"We discussed the issues of who we would contact if there was a complaint from someone in the community and how the university would respond and within what time frame they would respond," she said. "We felt we had gotten a lot of the issues resolved."

Dauler also said that sound levels would be monitored periodically during concerts by State College police officers. If decibel levels were higher than 70 decibels, university officials will be asked to turn down or stop the sound.

Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said the noise waiver does not have a time limit, but that the situation will be under review often during the first year.

"The university has accepted to monitor the sound," he said. "We hope that is sufficient to limit the nuisances and problems in neighborhoods."

Fountaine said The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts concert, the concert held the Saturday the festival ends, goes until 3 a.m. and is not included in this noise waiver.

"AfterFest is a separate event that will be approved by the borough council every year," he said.

Latta said there was no definitive reason for choosing six events using amplified sound.

"It was sort of arbitrary," he said. "We looked at how many months of the year we could use that space to support an outside amplified event, which was about six months, and we figured we're not going to have more than one event a month, so we thought six would be reasonable."