Zoning board places cell tower on hold

HORIZON WEST For now, Crown Castle USA’s bid to build a 140-foot-high monopole cell tower at the northeast corner of Fire Station 35 is on hold. At the May 5 Orange County Board of Zoning Adjustment hearing, the board voted against the special exception to construct the tower. 

Crown Castle USA now has the option to file an appeal by May 20, according to county staff. If the applicant does, there will be a public hearing before the Board of County Commissioners in June or July.

The tower was planned to be near Sunset Park Elementary, and several neighbors and parents of students at the elementary school were opposed to the plan. 

“I understand that the fire department needs to get their phone calls in, but it’s literally on top of a school,” said neighbor and Sunset Park Elementary parent Jane Dunkelberger.

A group of parents created a petition opposing the tower and received more than 200 signatures between the paper and online petition.

“There are studies that show danger coming from those towers and some that show that there’s no danger,”  said Tory Parish, who put together the online petition. “We don’t know the effects yet, and we may in five or 10 years know that there’s no effect. That to me says there’s too much unknown to put something like that next to a school, where there’s 1,200 and 1,300 kids there for six or seven hours a day.”

The case came before the zoning board because of the proposed tower’s proximity to 34 homes, so neighbors decided to argue against the tower from the position that it was not aesthetically pleasing to those nearby. 

“We would see that tower when we walk our kids to school,” Parish said. “When we run out to Walgreens to pick up a package of diapers, we’ll see it then. We’ll see it from the intersections that exit all of our neighborhoods.”

“If there were no homes within the perimeter, they would not have had to even have a meeting about this,” said Leann Flynn, whose child attends Sunset Park Elementary. “But (because) there are homes, they had to get it approved, which was very shocking, because they could do that for every school in Florida.”

A representative from Crown Castle said the company is in the process of reviewing its options for an appeal.

“The need for reliable wireless service persists in the surrounding area and will only increase as this area further develops,” officials said in a prepared statement.

Contact Jennifer Nesslar at [email protected].