By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — The Muse Hotel promised Tuesday night to silence its doormen's incessant whistling after months of residents' complaints.
As DNAinfo first reported, residents and workers on West 46th between Sixth and Seventh avenues have been pleading with the hotel to stop its fleet of doormen from using high-pitched whistles to hail cabs for hotel guests.
"We're in the process of putting a 'no whistling' policy into place," Muse security director Diomedes Jackson Jr. told those assembled at the Midtown North police precinct's community council meeting.
"We're not going to tolerate the whistling either," he said, "because it is annoying."
Jackson said he wants to work with the community, which has grown increasingly perturbed by the shrill blasts they say pierces through into local bars; disturbs performances at the Lyceum Theatre, whose back door faces the block; and even disrupts Sunday service at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin.
West 46th Street Block Association member Kathleen Cromwell, who has been leading the charge against the noise, said the problems got so bad Cromwell had even threatened to sue to stop the noise.
Throughout the dispute, residents have placed the weight of the blame on one particular bellhop, who they charge insists on whistling even when others agree to use LED lights.
While hotel management had previously defended its staff's right to use whistles to hail cabs as a last resort, they also tried to lay blame on the union, which they say forced them to rehire the bellhop after they'd tried to give him the boot.
"We had no choice but to allow him to go back to his duties," said Jackson, who cautioned that, despite new rules, the bellhops might choose not comply with the new rules.
A spokesman for the New York Hotel Workers' Union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cromwell said she was grateful to police for arranging the meeting, but she was less than optimistic that the promise would be kept.
"We'll see," she said.
