Hoover board approves taller cell phone tower in Greystone

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The Hoover Board of Zoning Adjustment tonight gave approval for Crown Castle to replace a 90-foot-tall cell phone tower in Greystone with a 120-foot-tall tower to help Verizon Wireless improve service.

The existing tower is at the entrance to the Greystone Crest community and is barely visible from homes in Greystone Crest due to tree cover but can be seen from the adjacent Greystone Farms community.

It has antennas for AT&T and the city of Hoover, said Andy Rotenstreich, an attorney representing Crown Castle.

Verizon Wireless originally wanted to add its equipment to the existing tower in Greystone Crest, but that tower will not structurally accommodate the Verizon equipment, according to information Crown Castle filed with the city.

Crown Castle could make the existing tower 20 feet taller without additional approval from the city, but it needs to go 30 feet taller to allow adequate distance between the city of Hoover antenna and Verizon antenna, Rotenstreich said.

Crown Castle plans to put the new, taller tower about 8 to 10 feet away from the existing tower and then tear the existing tower down once antennas have been installed on the new tower, he said.

The new tower should be in place and functioning three to four months from now, said John Barstow, a real estate projects manager for Crown Castle.

Verizon needs the new antenna because current Verizon coverage in the Greystone area is weak and not adequate to provide acceptable voice and data transmission speeds to customers inside buildings, according to information filed with the cell tower application.

There are no existing cell towers in the Greystone residential area that Verizon can use, and “due to the hilly terrain, we cannot provide coverage in the Greystone subdivision unless we have a site at that location,” according to the information from Verizon.

If Crown Castle had not gotten approval to replace the existing tower, it likely would have applied for a second tower at that site or close to it to serve Verizon, Rotenstreich said.

Dan Mikos, chairman of the Hoover Board of Zoning Adjustment, said he voted in favor of the “special exception” request because there was no opposition to it and he thinks people will appreciate getting better service.

In the past, there sometimes has been opposition to cell towers, and in those cases, the Board of Zoning Adjustment sometimes has worked with companies installing the towers to try to make them look more like trees, but that was only needed in certain locations, Mikos said.

“I think the public today — they want cell towers. They want good service,” he said.