From the BCCT:
Cell tower to rise atop roof
By: DANNY ADLER
Bucks County Courier Times
A land use and two height variances cleared the way for T-Mobile Northeast to construct the 102-foot tower.
Three was the lucky number for T-Mobile Northeast LLC on Monday.
During the third session of a zoning hearing, zoning officials approved in a 3-0 vote three separate variances for the company's third proposal to bring a cell phone tower to Morrisville.
T-Mobile in May first proposed a 102-foot, three-sided cell tower "stealthed" as a clock tower in the parking lot of the Morrisville Shopping Center at East Trenton and North Pennsylvania avenues. That proposal was amended in June when the company said it would consider putting up a lattice tower and moving it to the roof of the Dollar Tree store there.
At Monday's hearing, the zoning hearing board approved a land use and two height variances for the third proposal - a tapered, white "flagless flagpole" where the antennas will be hidden inside the structure atop the store.
The cell tower, to stand atop the two-story building, will still top off at 102 feet from the parking lot ground, engineer and project manager Mario Calabretta said.
"It will still give us the height that we need for the antennas," Calabretta said of the tower, which T-Mobile hopes will fill a 2/3-square-mile coverage gap in Morrisville.
While a handful of residents have questioned whether T-Mobile needs to construct the tower in Morrisville, critics said they were pleased that the company listened to their and the zoning hearing board's concerns and revised their plans.
One of the critics, nearby Crown Street resident Bill Setzer, said he was surprised by Monday's amended plan.
"It is less intrusive than the original proposal," he said after the board's unanimous vote by members Steve Schmelzer, Andrew Redmond and Raffaele Persico.
Resident Deborah Colgan encouraged the board to deny the application, saying she didn't feel T-Mobile did enough to demonstrate that other locations couldn't be used for the cell tower.
"It's putting an unattractive utility at the entrance to our town," she said.
