Disguises Help Cut Static Over High-Tech Towers

As he glided past the water-squirting elephants, lush faux palm trees and prowling tigers at Disneyland, Al Landini had an epiphany.

The Los Angeles zoning administrator had grown weary of trying to balance the concerns of homeowners against the rights of cellular phone providers to erect their towering antennas around the city.

But as he gazed upon the artificial fantasy world of Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise, Landini saw an answer.

“Why can’t they make the antennas look like palm trees?”

It turned out they could. And they have.

Just this year, two cellular phone antennas disguised as palm trees have sprouted in Winnetka, and there are about 10 others elsewhere in the city. The cloaking devices are just one of the many ways that business people are finding to mask technology.

Some are embracing the technique to avoid not-in-my-backyard battles, while others do it simply to create a mood.

“What we are doing intuitively here is to hide raw, urban edifices to bring comfort to the population,” Landini said. “Millions of people want cell phones; at the same time, they want a softer-looking city.”

In Northridge and Westlake Village, visitors to outdoor shopping centers enjoy music beamed at them from speakers shaped as rocks, which are also expected to crop up at shopping centers planned for Calabasas and Farmers Market in Los Angeles. Throughout Ventura County, GTE has installed hundreds of rock facades to hide recently installed digital cable boxes.

Seal Beach in 1996 decided to use its beloved City Hall clock tower as a site for Pacific Bell’s cellular telephone relay equipment. The equipment was tucked inside and painted to match the tower’s exterior.

For three years, the obelisk at Edwards Irvine Spectrum has housed AT&T;’s cell phone apparatus. “It is a landmark of sorts,” said Paul Brady Jr., Irvine’s city manager. “Everybody’s been pleased with its appearance.”

The nation’s churches have been singled out by the cellular phone industry as particularly gracious hosts for their antennas.

The technology is often hidden in giant crosses or specially built steeples. Monthly rents are paid to the churches, which use the money for social causes.

“We’ve found God,” said Tim Ayers, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn. “We’re building more church steeples than any other industry in history.”

The flurry of new construction is partially the result of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act. The federal law strictly prohibits local governments from shutting out companies that want to provide wireless communication services in an area and from banning cellular phone towers on the ground that their emissions are unsafe, leaving that power to the FCC.

But it allows cities to regulate the way the antennas look, and with new companies racing to build their systems, available sites are becoming scarce.

While cities throughout Southern California have been quick to pass ordinances regulating the placement and appearance of antennas, the Los Angeles City Council has yet to do so. As a result, the decision-making process has largely been left to city zoning administrators like Landini.

Landini whipped up the palm tree concept about three years ago after growing tired of meeting after meeting pitting disgruntled residents against cellular phone providers over proposed sites. Landini mentioned his disguise idea to consultants employed by the cellular phone industry, who began researching the possibility.

“Whether I’m the father of that, I don’t know. But to me it’s a way of reducing urban stress,” said Landini, a San Fernando Valley resident. “What makes your day stressful isn’t palm trees, it’s the hard edges.”

Reducing eye pollution has also been a goal of Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick. Responding to residents’ concerns, Chick’s office urges cellular phone providers to cloak antennas installed in highly visible locations in her council district.

“It’s really about visual blight,” Chick said.

“If they are something that people are going to be seeing on a regular basis, then they should blend into the landscape.”

Times staff writer Valerie Burgher contributed to this story.