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Yeah, that was fun. I worked in the Rackspace Austin office (an old call center building with it's own problems) but I often had to be in San Antonio for meetings.

The noise was crazy. Even after taking steps to address the noise it was still an issue. Not much you can do with all the concrete a mall is typically made of.

And the 2nd floor shook and moved around a lot after folks moved in. It was actually nauseating.

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I'm no expert, but I have a little experience with sound mitigation.

IME, the effort needed to reduce unwanted noise depends a lot on the frequency range.

Very roughly speaking, dampening high-frequency sounds can be done with relatively thin and light sound-absorbing materials. Lower-frequency noise, including vibrations that shake the building's superstructure, require more extensive modifications.

It would be awesome if an actual acoustic engineer or architect could weigh in on this.

I wonder if you could use active noise cancelling on the floors

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