Sprint defeats town in Maine and will be allowed to build tower

[larry]

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/y...news/19130.htm

I always love reading these articles where ridiculous NIMBY'S lose. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

[SprintTechRep]

i wonder why people fight so hard to stop towers from being built. Do they enjoy crappy cell phone reception? Or maybe they just like coming on boards to complain about not enuff towers.

[Yoshokun]

I live in a town of 7,000. The only digital service we have is ATT. The old people fight new towers being built.... but hey, we just had a Town Hall Q&A with Sprint Spectrum back in July about MAYBE building a tower!..........

I hate Connecticut.

[bobolito]

I wonder what goes on inside the mind of a NIMBY? Spiderwebs, cockroaches? I bet those who were against building the tower are the same people who call Sprint and complain about service.

[ZaphodB]

It is a fact that the close proximity of a cell phone tower does have an adverse effect on property values.

What I think is odd about that is that people who live in the barrio where you can still get a home for $200,000, and for whom a $3,000 drop in property value would be more harmful, don't generally oppose cell towers.

People who live in rich gated communities, where you can't get a home for less than, say, $800,000, for whom a $3,000 drop in property value is much less of a hit, percentagewise (oh no, your home is now worth $808,000, not $811,000) are the ones who freak out.

[Yoshokun]

Well, the thing is, Sprint Spectrum said they DIDN'T want to build a TOWER per se, but they can hide the equipment itself inside of existing buildings... such as church steeples (of which, there are many here) and pay like $4K a month to the owner of the property.

Most of the town is zoned as a historical district anyway, they'd never be able to put a 100 foot high tower in, even if it went to court.

Adam

Edit: Fixed my obscenely poor spelling. My bad.

I'm sure there's some nut in there that's preaching that high energy towers cause cancer.

[Airb330]

I am glad my state is not like that, they just build their towers next to the highways, then build one or two out in the boonies, and Delaware was covered, lol, we aren't very large. Of course this works for the 800 players like Verizon and Cingular, I don't know how the 1900 players work, probably not as well.

[bfbchief]

Yoshokun Where in CT do you live? Sounds like my town 7000 people no one wants a damn tower. I live in Woodstock.

[bobolito]

Originally posted by: ZaphodB
It is a fact that the close proximity of a cell phone tower does have an adverse effect on property values.

What I think is odd about that is that people who live in the barrio where you can still get a home for $200,000, and for whom a $3,000 drop in property value would be more harmful, don't generally oppose cell towers.

People who live in rich gated communities, where you can't get a home for less than, say, $800,000, for whom a $3,000 drop in property value is much less of a hit, percentagewise (oh no, your home is now worth $808,000, not $811,000) are the ones who freak out.

The proximity of a cell tower can cause other effects in older people's brain such as causing Mrs. Grandma to complain that she can't see the mountain as well as she could before from her kitchen window because Sprint installed a tower in her line of sight.
Also, if I was a residential building owner I would be delighted to have Sprint antennas as tenants on the roof of my building. Those are big bucks which will definitely outweight the property value decrease. Not to mention that tenants in the building will have excellent coverage. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

[SprintTechRep]

I could understand if towers were really ugly or something. But I know new towers being built are usually designed to blend in with the environment, such as building a tower to look like windmill. Not sure why that would lower property values especially since towers are for the most part, beneficial since most people have cell phones nowadays. But then again, im not a real estate expert. So maybe ill just shut my hole and continue to hear customers yell at me for bad coverage. *sigh* you never win [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

[lexikon]

As a former homeowner in that area, I know exactly why they would object. The York coast, all of Maine's coast, is splendidly beautiful and is in no way enhanced by cell towers. I think Sprint and the other carriers would have been smarter to locate the tower a few hundred feet out to sea ... inside the Nubble Light. It's gummint proppity, as they'd say in Maine - and the tower would not only be out of sight, but provide extended coverage for all the boaters out in York Harbor. Frankly, I think it was kind of stupid for Sprint not to consider and pursue this much less adversarial route. Fie on them! (And they're mu carrier.)