Phone Users vs. Antenna Foes: They’re Poles Apart

Forget all those complaints about people talking on their cellular phones while driving. These days, the real discord is between residents who want better reception on their phones and those who hate the unwieldy towers that improved reception demands.

And caught in the middle are the cities, which make money from the deals with the big telecommunications companies but also must take the flak from residents who have had it with the towers.

“We get complaints that there’s just too many antennas and that they’re too close to residential areas,” said Chuck Wilson, director of community development for Mission Viejo, who adds that his office gets at least one request a month to build an antenna. “We’re getting a lot more operators approaching the city, trying to get their network in town.”

Mission Viejo is not alone.

“We’re getting a rash of the antenna requests,” said Ed Knight, director of community development for Dana Point. “We have locations where the antenna hardly raises a ripple. But as it gets closer to residential, we get more and more complaints.”

That may be because residents hate it when the hulking poles end up marring their neighborhoods or interfering with their views. In their most basic state, the antennas are downright unattractive, critics say.

*

To help mitigate the problem, Knight said, Dana Point now requires companies to share antenna poles, and the city has taken pains to attach the poles to buildings or disguise them. Dana Point even has an antenna designed like a lighthouse.

Disguising the structures--as palms, pine trees, flagpoles and even clock towers--is the best way to lessen the ire about the towers. But for some residents, the poles are the price that has to be paid for better cell phone reception.

“They’re extremely unattractive,” said Brandy Walker of Huntington Beach, who used to live near an antenna. “[But] because I use a cell phone all the time, I can’t really complain about them.”

Just last week, the Mission Viejo Planning Commission approved Pacific Bell Wireless’ request to build a tower at the Moulton Niguel Water District facility. It will be disguised as a flagpole.

“The demand is growing exponentially,” said Duan Dao of O’Neal Communications in Irvine, who was a consultant for Pacific Bell and was in charge of the request for the Mission Viejo tower.

“It’s rare that you can go down to South County and just do a plain old pole,” he said. “Everything has to look good. Cities down there are actually very concerned about it.”

Cellular phone providers win some and lose some in the push to build the antennas.

In June, awash in requests to place antennas and without sufficient rules to govern them, Westminster imposed a moratorium on new ones. The Planning Commission last month unanimously adopted a new streamlined application process that standardizes requirements for the antennas.

Commissioners for Placentia turned down a request this spring by Sprint PCS for a 74-foot-high antenna at the Champions Sports Complex--one of the few such permits that got a thumbs-down. Placentia resident Jill Martinez’s complaint typified the opposition: “We already have too many poles.”

But as the number of cell phones increases, so too must the number of antennas to support all those signals. Which means Aidee Razo of Santa Ana may yet join the ranks of the antenna-haters.

“I’ve only really noticed the antennas along freeways,” she said. “But if a big antenna was placed in my neighborhood, it would really bother me.”