Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Cell Towers Stick Out as Eyesores, Except When Companies Mask Their Appearance

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 14:13:41 -0400

Cell Towers Stick Out as Eyesores, Except When Companies Mask Their
Appearance
May 17, 2004 9:12pm
Knight-Ridder / Tribune Business News

May 17--WARWICK, N.Y. -- Farmers Bing and Betty Nop live at Meadow Brook
Farm, a dairy concern with acres of rolling green hills and cornfields
stretching out like a patchwork quilt draping into Pine Island's Black
Dirt.

The setting -- with its 200-year-old farmhouse and red clapboard barn --
is something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Everything, that is,
except for the Sprint PCS cell-telephone equipment crowning one of their
70-foot silos.

The six-pronged gray-white antenna system can be seen from the couple's
kitchen window but, because of its color, it blends in nicely with the
silo and the surrounding sky.

"If it wasn't for the monthly checks, I wouldn't even know the thing was
up there," says Betty Nop.
Not all cell towers are so easily overlooked, however.

Frequently, these metal latticework structures are industrial and ugly
-- often standing hundreds of feet above the tree line.
For instance, in the Village of Florida, a 140-foot cell tower looms
large behind a custard stand along Route 17A. There are two cell phone
companies on the tower now -- T-Mobile and CellularOne -- and soon, a
third: Nextel.

As the number of towers grow to improve service, clashes over their
looks have become more frequent. Under federal legislation, phone
companies have until 2006 to reach two-thirds of the population.

Local governments seeking to strike a balance between customer demand
and aesthetics have tried to regulate the towers' appearances. Looking
to be cooperative, some cell-phone companies have turned to so-called
stealth technology.
In Goshen, T-Mobile just finished installing a transmitter inside the
historic steeple of the First Presbyterian Church.
"The tower looks as it always has," says The Rev. David Kingsley.

To him, the installation just made sense: the tower is the tallest
building in the village and the hardware is invisible, hidden inside the
132-year-old fieldstone structure.

Elsewhere, Nextel just won approval to place a cell transmitter on top
of the water tower at Camp La Guardia in Chester. Just outside Ramapo, a
cell tower was made to look like a flagpole.

"There really is a clash over visual and practical concerns," says
Orange County Planning Commissioner David Church. "But there are
alternatives to the actual towers. Some companies are simply adding to
existing structures: churches, firehouses, water towers – anything
tall."

The trouble, says Goshen activist Holly O'Hern, is that many local
governments don't know they have options or they're not prepared to
pressure cell phone companies to go with these more expensive solutions.

A typical cell tower costs roughly $200,000 to $300,000; a stealth
solution can be as much as $400,000.
"It's really just a matter of education," O'Hern says. "Cell towers are
just plain ugly. But if you can hide it in some way, people won't object
to it. They won't object to something they can't see."

Take, for example, the flap in the Town of Wallkill. Verizon wants to
erect a 100-foot tower to fill a hole in its phone coverage along Route
17. So far, Verizon is meeting with public opposition.

"We've been taking a crash course in cell phone technology," says
homeowner Kyle Farrell.

That lesson began last December when she first learned that Verizon
wanted to raise the tower near her property. Wallkill says Verizon is
now searching for a new site, a lawsuit is pending and the Town Board is
caught in the middle.

"The law says you cannot tell them where to put their towers," O'Hern
says. "But you can tell them what they should look like."

To see more of The Times Herald-Record, or to subscribe to the
newspaper, go to http://www.recordonline.com

http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR200405181180.3_733b001210b9c98b

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