Rising Above the Ugliness

Rising demand for cellular phone and pager service has brought about hassles and headaches--the towering pole-mounted transmitters that many see as eyesores.

Homeowners and others who live or work near the proposed transmitter sites increasingly are protesting plans to build towers in the Los Angeles area.

They are often “viewed by the public as huge, ugly metal weeds that are nothing but eyesores,” said Jack Cressman, a Laguna Beach architect who specializes in designing cellular antenna structures.

In the eastern San Gabriel Valley city of San Dimas, however, planners and city officials think they’ve found a way to address both the rising demand for cellular service and the growing distaste for the accompanying transmission towers. An ordinance passed last year requires most pole-mounted transmitters to be hidden or designed as pieces of public art.

The result has been a spate of new projects that would hide transmitters in structures designed to fit in with the city’s rustic look. They include a working clock tower, a windmill and a replica of a farm water tower.

The projects have yet to be completed, but they cruised through zoning approval without the controversy that has stalled or blocked cellular antenna projects in other cities. “It’s a win-win situation for everybody,” said Craig Hensley, a city planner for San Dimas.

The San Dimas ordinance allows unadorned pole transmitters within 150 feet of a freeway in industrial zones. In others areas, the transmitters must be mounted on buildings in a way that matches the architecture, or they must be hidden among such structures as athletic field lights and outdoor signs.

The third option is to design the transmitters as public art projects, such as the windmill transmitter being put up by L.A. Cellular.

The windmill project became a personal mission for architect Cressman. Knowing nothing about windmill design or construction, he turned a visit to a son in North Carolina into a fact-finding expedition, stopping at farms and businesses with windmills and interviewing the owners.

Obtaining a windmill for the project also proved difficult, since they are seldom used on California’s huge farms, which require more powerful mechanized pumping systems. Cressman eventually found one through a company in Ohio that refurbishes old windmills.

One major change will have to be made to the old windmill before it is mounted on the transmitter tower. The windmill’s metal blades, or sails, will have to be replaced with fiberglass ones, since the spinning metal sails would interfere with the transmitter signals.

Disguising cellular transmitters continues a Southern California tradition of hiding towering commercial structures. In Long Beach harbor, for instance, oil rigs are covered with palm, macadamia and banana trees as well as carved tikis.

Although few cities have public art requirements similar to those in San Dimas, individual transmitters in some nearby cities have been camouflaged.

Transmitters in nearby Upland are disguised by an artificial palm tree, and in Diamond Bar a transmitter atop a building will be covered with a clock.

In San Dimas, the transmitter art projects try to reconcile the region’s high-tech demands with the early Western look that San Dimas has cultivated for decades.

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The city, 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, adopted a Western theme in the 1970s that has been incorporated into the design of many of its low-slung downtown buildings. Sidewalks along its main street are wooden and a network of equestrian trails cuts through town.

Building the artful transmitters isn’t cheap. Cressman estimates the windmill project will cost $55,000 more than a standard transmitter site.

But for the added expense, companies can avoid many of the battles with local planning commissions, city councils and neighborhood groups that often come with erecting transmitters.

Such conflicts can be costly and frustrating because local officials and residents often “know what [they] don’t want, but don’t know what [they] want,” when debating what kinds of transmitters might be acceptable, according to Cressman. “San Dimas was the uncommon exception; they knew exactly what they wanted,” he said.

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Michael J. Shewbridge, an architect who is overseeing numerous transmitter projects for Pacific Bell, including the clock tower in San Dimas, said the art projects are “a bit of a compromise for the carrier, but they’ll do it if they want the site bad enough.”

In the case of the clock tower, that decision has yet to be made. The tower has cleared the city’s zoning process, but Pacific Bell isn’t sure if it wants to spend the extra money to build the 70-foot illuminated tower. According to Shewbridge, the clock tower could cost about $50,000 more than a standard transmitter.

Camouflaging transmitters also does not address the concerns of residents who sometimes oppose transmitters because they fear ill health effects from electromagnetic fields.

Studies by the Federal Communications Commission have found no danger from radio transmissions, but transmitter projects still run into opposition from those who are unconvinced by the federal tests.

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Western Theme

Cellular telephone antennas will be disguised on this windmill tower, designed by architect Jack Cressman, to blend in with San Dimas’ early Western look.