Cell tower proposed at pool in Annandale
By Frank Mustac
An application with the county to install a 140-foot-tall cell phone and broadband wireless tower on property belonging to the Holmes Run Acres community pool in Annandale has a few neighbors concerned about the impact on property values as well as on their health.
The swimming pool facility is located on about four wooded acres at 3451 Gallows Road inside the Capitol Beltway, just east of I-495.
Arlington-based Community Wireless Structures has been contracted by Verizon to install what is technically called a monopole that is designed to support communications equipment from multiple carriers, not just Verizon.
About 25 area residents attended a community outreach meeting held May 1 at nearby Friendship United Methodist Church. The meeting is part of a Fairfax County-mandated process that will also include public hearings before the county Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.
On Saturday, May 17, from 8 a.m. to noon, the public is invited to witness a tethered balloon being released to illustrate the height of the planned tower.
"That's to assess visual impact," said Tam Murray, CEO of Community Wireless Structures.
Murray noted that with home use of wireless broadband becoming more prevalent, home buyers are looking for houses closer to towers.
"Also, emissions from carrier antennas are a fraction of the federal safety thresholds," Murray said.
Louis Chaconas, who with his relatives own several residential rental properties adjacent to the pool, said the pool property is already home to what he described as at least two commercial operations. The monopole would be a third.
Chaconas said that there is log-splitting equipment, firewood storage and a commercial-type utility vehicle on the premises. Noisy county school buses are also parked on site, he said.
"It's becoming quite frustrating to see those commercial activities," Chaconas said. "I think it would be a lot easier for us to coexist knowing we're next to a commercially zoned property or we become a commercially zoned property with them."
Chaconas suggested the monopole be located farther away from the homes he owns, and that the school buses could be parked on about two acres at nearby Woodburn Elementary School, donated by his family to the school in the 1960s.
Norm Gottleib, president of the nonprofit Holmes Run Acres Recreation Center, which runs the community pool, said that installing the monopole on site would bring a steady monthly income to the pool.
"The pools aren't getting any cheaper to run, I'll tell you that much," Gottleib said, noting that preserving the pool facility with its woodland means keeping it from a developer that could construct about 15 large single-family houses or substantially more town homes on the site.
"It's a good deal for us and a good deal for the community," Gottleib said of the monopole.