Cell phone tower cleared as windmill

By Jeff Pope

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 | 11:40 a.m.

Clark County commissioners approved a windmill, nearly 100 feet tall, on Dec. 17 to be built on the north side of Lone Mountain Road and the east side of the Las Vegas Beltway.

The windmill won’t be generating clean electrical power, but will be transmitting cell phone calls.

Residents in the area opposed another faux-tree cell phone tower so commissioners and the developer, Strategic Real Estate Services, agreed its design should have a bucolic farmscape windmill appearance.

The windmill blades will rise above the array, which sits 80 feet above the ground.

The tower is being built for Verizon, but will have room to add other carriers. It will serve customers within a two- to three-mile radius of the site.

Logandale-Dorrell LLC owns the 5 acres of land where the tower will be built. The land is intended to be a rural neighborhood preservation area, which generally contains old ranches and livestock.

The county created the area designations in 2004 to preserve neighborhoods from dense development. The Lone Mountain Citizens Advisory Committee recommended the tower’s builder find a more commercial site for it.

For the past two months, Strategic Real Estate Services worked with Nevada Ready Mix to negotiate a cell tower location on its nearby property. However, legal concerns prevented a deal, said Jason Briar, who represented Strategic Real Estate Services.

“We have diligently spent the last few months trying to work something out to no avail,” he said.

Commissioners approved the location being moved 400 feet to the south, which is closer to future development of Lone Mountain Regional Park.

Commissioner Chip Maxfield asked county planners to look at the current, cumbersome process to locate cell towers at parks and schools and see what can be done to make parks and schools viable options.

“I’m sure that there was intent to try to find areas where cell towers will be a little bit less intrusive,” he said. “We need to come up with something, even to try again ... with the school district to really come up with a good system that’s going to allow cell towers on stadium lighting at high schools, or incorporate it into park designs, or whatever.”

The phone carriers lease the land for towers, which would provide additional revenue for the county or school district, Maxfield said.

The Lone Mountain committee recommended denying the tower because of its proximity to rural homes, a lack of landscaping, and suggested looking for other locations including moving it closer to Cheyenne Avenue.

Jeff Pope can be reached at 990-2688 or [email protected].