....................480 Adams Street, Suite #208, Milton Massachusetts, USA • 617.696.7758
 
 
 
 

Appeals Board Rejects
Blue Hills Cell Tower

By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
6/24/10
The Board of Appeals has denied a variance request for T-Mobile to construct a cell tower in Milton.

The tower, which would have stood at 120 feet on the Camp Sayre property on Unquity Road, was opposed by many groups, including the Friends of the Blue Hills and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.

The DCR owns a conservation restriction on the camp property, which is operated by the Boston Minuteman Council and hosts many Boy Scout groups.

T-Mobile said the area is a dead zone for cell-phone calls, and proposed the telecommunications facility as a way to bridge coverage from other towers that don’t always reach that part of town.

The DCR said T-Mobile has no right to build on the land because the conservation restriction prohibits any development on the property.

“It’s pretty clear what their position is,” said Board of Appeals Chair Brian Hurley, adding that he could not support the cell tower while DCR opposes it. “When we’re faced with clear and unequivocal opposition [by DCR] … it would be ignoring reality to [support the request].”

Jennifer Lewis, an attorney representing T-Mobile, said the company had a formal understanding with the Boy Scout camp ownership to build on the property. Lewis encouraged the Board of Appeals to “judge the application on its merits” and allow T-Mobile to hash out its differences with DCR.

“Any property interests should be settled in Land Court,” Lewis said.

However, board member Steve Lundbohm said he didn’t feel the application met the standards of town’s own bylaw for telecommunication facilities, which discourages free-standing towers. Two sticking points with Lundbohm were the opportunity for T-Mobile to seek to co-locate its facility on another tower or find an alternate, less obtrusive site, neither of which he felt the applicant had adequately researched.

He said the proposed tower at Camp Sayre “couldn’t be a more intrusive use.”

Peter Church, a regional manager with DCR, was at the meeting to reaffirm the department’s opposition to the tower being put up at Camp Sayre. Several residents also spoke out against the plan.

Elizabeth Eustis, of Canton Avenue, viewed the cell-tower proposal as a “chipping away” of the town’s limited recreation and open-space areas.

A few residents have said they would welcome the tower. At a prior hearing, Luftbery Street resident Jeff Stone said he supports it because of the poor cell-phone coverage he experiences in that region of town.

The Board of Appeals rejected a similar proposal to build near the Blue Hills last summer. New Hampshire-based Green Mountain Communications was proposing building a 140-foot cell tower off Blue Hill River Road on a parcel 50 yards from a major highway. In that case, the board said the neighbors’ concerns about the structure outweighed the need for it.

– Scott MacKeen