HomeMy WebLinkAboutT-MOBILE (CEDARWOOD PLAZA) WTF - FDP - 38-06A/C - CORRESPONDENCE - (3)Anne Aspen - RE: Cedarwood T-Mobile VV iss Tower Page 2
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>>> "Wendy Clark" <wendy@allpropertyservices.com> 1/17/2008 8:33 AM >>>
Anne:
I was called away from my private life and family to meet with Chris of
T-Mobile on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago. When I made the time to meet
with him and Bill Van Aaron, Chris began the meeting behind my house saying
he would plant 6 foot trees behind our fence. I was stunned that he felt
that 6 foot trees, no matter what species, would solve the problem of our
view from our back yard. After listening to him for 15 minutes, I felt he
was wasting my time and left.
It was obvious to me, that T-Mobile has no intensions of planting anything
that would help this situation during my lifetime. I do not understand why
he asked me to meet with him other than to further irritate, me.
If the City of Fort Collins and you and Cameron do NOT care about what
happens to the people and families in neighborhoods of this city, then do
NOT take up my time in hearing your empty promises. This entire process of
you holding hearings and meetings and getting neighbors and people involved,
proved to me to be a terrible waste of time and energy. My respect for your
department and the people that run it, is non-existent. I feel sorry for
all the neighbors and people that showed up at those meetings and
continually expressed their opinions about the visual aspect of this ugly
cell tower, to NO avail. From the beginning, YOU and the City had every
intension of allowing T-Mobile's cell tower to be constructed on the King
Soopers site. I find it very sad that big business has tainted your
decisions on how you relate to the public. Shame on YOU!
Wendy Clark
CC: ccstryker2@aol.com; Sara Hansen
Anne Asfren - RE: Cedarwood T-Mobile V 'ess Tower Page 1
From: Anne Aspen
To: billvaneron@comcast.net; Jeff Valloric; Wendy Clark
Date: 1/22/20084:51:42 PM
Subject: RE: Cedarwood T-Mobile Wireless Tower
Wendy,
1 was sorry to read in your email message that the proposed efforts to visually screen your property from
the cell phone tower are not acceptable to you.
As I mentioned during the first neighborhood meeting, the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act prohibits
any municipality in the US from denying a cell phone tower based on health concerns or simply not
wanting it in any zone district where the use is permitted. The Telecommunications Act requires cities to
have zone districts where they are permitted uses. Fort Collins has very few zone districts where
telecommunications facilities are allowed compared to other communities and they are all commercial
zone districts.
It is very unfortunate that in this particular case, the cell tower was proposed on the border with an existing
residential neighborhood. The City staff agrees that this is not an optimal location for a cell tower and has
in fact worked quite hard with the property owner to facilitate locating this tower elsewhere on the site, to
no avail. In order to buffer residents from the impact of the tower, we have drawn on the compatibility
standards in our Land Use Code to require the applicant to provide trees to visually screen the project.
The hearing officer stipulated in his decision that the applicant would need to incorporate each property
owner's input about what kind of trees and where along their property they wished them to be placed,
giving neighbors substantial power to influence the character of the visual screening.
In the decision from the hearing, the applicant is required to plant 10-foot tall trees, not the standard 6-foot
trees. This requirement is in place to jump start the trees' usefulness to screen the tower. Staff has
recommended Austrian Pines because they are very well adapted to this area and are likely to grow
quickly (12-18" per year) and thus be quite effective in screening the view. The applicant has agreed to
plant 14 larger -than -standard trees on this site and to irrigate and maintain them. Five of the fourteen
trees will be planted along your property line. The new trees will have the additional immediate benefit of
helping to screen the other unsightly aspects of the view, such as the large trash compactor and semi
trailers.
Based on your comments, I imagine that no amount of mitigation will likely appease you or cause you to
accept the cell tower, but a number of extra -ordinary steps have been taken to minimize the negative
impacts to you from this project.
1 am attaching a scaled cross-section drawing of the site which shows your house, a person between 5
and 6 feet tall standing in the back yard, the existing fence, the proposed tree, the cell tower and the King
Sooper's (I made some guesses about the height of your home but these do not affect the drawing —the
rest of the distances and heights are to scale). As you can see, there is a relationship between how far
the trees are from your property line and how long they will take to grow to fully screen the tower.
If you wish to make any final comments regarding the placement or type of trees, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Anne Aspen
Anne Aspen
City Planner
Planning & Zoning Department
Development Review Center
City of Fort Collins, CO
aaspen@fcgov.com