A company with plans to put a disputed cell tower on Chattanooga’s Southside may have found a better location just a few hundred feet away.
Officials with Wireless Properties LLC on Wednesday asked the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals to defer action for a month on the 180-foot cell tower proposed at 1706 Rossville Ave. while they evaluate an alternate site about 900 feet southeast of the site.
Matt Bates, vice president of Wireless Properties, said the owners of Southern Auto Body Supply, near Rossville Avenue and Adams Street, have agreed to put a tower on their property. He said the company plans to submit a proposal for the new location for next month’s zoning board meeting.
“We feel from that location, we can still serve the (radio frequency) need that’s out there, and we can be even farther away from the district, and in an even better location that hopefully more people will be happy with,” Mr. Bates told the panel.
Paul Archambault, historic preservation planner with the Southeast Tennessee Development District, has seen the alternate location and said the site would need further analysis before any decision could be made.
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Plans for a 180-foot cell phone tower in the Main Street Arts District were delayed until the July meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals.
When plans for the tower were proposed, residents and developers expressed concerns the tower would be detrimental to the area’s revitalization. The original site is near Washington Street and Rossville Avenue near Main Street.
Residents and business owners have called the proposed tower an “eyesore.”
Initially, approval was delayed 30 days so the tower permit could be reviewed by the Historic Zoning Commission. Since then, officials with Wireless Properties have twice asked to defer their decision while the company explored alternate sites.
Company officials still dispute the need for approval by the Historic Zoning Commission.
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I'm a member of the new community in Jefferson Heights that is up in arm's about this cell towers location. I find it appalling that they would even think this new location is better. True, it is further away from Main Street, and in a more 'industrial' area. But one of the reason that people in our community purchased our houses is that we can step onto our back porches and look at beautiful Lookout Mountain. Yes, there are some telephone lines in the way, which is a detractor to the view, but does this company somehow think that a 180 ft. cell tower is going to just 'blend in'? If anything, the new location is just as bad. Chattanooga is known as a scenic city, and that isn't just to get the tourists in. It's one of the reason that I live here, and now this company is going to take that away from ME to make a profit. And what are they giving back to the community? A couple bars on a cell phone? Free wi-fi access to the community that's being marred by this tower (no)? More like radiation and interference beamed directly into our homes. If that's his form of repayment I'll pass, as I'm sure the rest of our new community will as well.