ARB Denies MetroPCS Cell Phone Tower Application

The First Presbyterian Church of Southampton’s historic clock tower will remain untouched, for now, as the Southampton Village Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation on July 25 denied MetroPCS’s application to install a cellular phone tower inside the clock tower on the corner of South Main Street and Meeting House Lane.

The ARB found that the proposal to install synthetic siding to the historic church tower as required by the plan was “not appropriate to the property” and would be a “voluntary or elective alteration to the church exterior” that does not meet the standards of village code pertaining to historic structures.

Church leaders said they have not decided what their next step would be. Church Trustee Wayne Bruyn said on Friday that the church leaders will review a copy of the decision and consult with representatives from MetroPCS.

While the ruling serves as a relief for those who want the tower to remain as is—like the Corwin family, who have been charged with winding and maintaining the historic clock for more than a century—it’s also a blow to a church in need of the funds the installation would have provided.

The application, which was the second of its kind by MetroPCS since July 2011, proposed building four antennas inside the tower’s clock faces. Four sections of the existing wood siding around the faces on the exterior of the building would have been replaced by fiberglass reinforced polymer (FRP) to allow more efficient transmission of the cellular signal. The existing historic wood would have been removed, wrapped and stored in crates in the church’s basement storage area.

According to church trustees, hosting the cell tower would have brought in a dedicated source of funds to help maintain the building—a feat which has been difficult to continue, they said.

The church recently lost a $52,000-per-year contract with the Southampton School District, through which the church leased space to the district to host a pre-K program. Church members have said that the loss of the contract paired with a decreasing church membership, as well as regular maintenance of the church, is taking a toll.

The church entered into a five-year lease agreement with MetroPCS last year, which would have “provided a financial benefit to the church,” according to Mr. Bruyn. The agreement, however, depended upon gaining village approval for the cell tower project. If the application were given the green light and MetroPCS built its tower, the church could have garnered at least $2,000 per month as a cell tower host.

Although the ARB was aware of the church’s need for financial assistance, it only had the authority to make a decision based on aesthetics and historic preservation.

Seen as an “elective surgery,” in the words of Zach Studenroth, the Southampton Town historian and consultant to the ARB, the board found that the installation and removal of the original historic wood was not a necessary change.

“The request is the result of a voluntary enterprise by the First Presbyterian Church to replace the existing sheathing with the FRP material to accommodate the installation of the communication equipment,” the board said in its written statement. “This is not a circumstance where a historic material in need of maintenance, repair or replacement can no longer be obtained and a synthetic, or non-historic material represents a viable, or the only, replacement.”

Attorney Keith Brown of Brown & Altman LLC., which represents MetroPCS, stressed during the ARB meetings this summer that the FRP material “area of disturbance” would be less than 1 percent of the church exterior, and there would be “no change in appearance at all.”

Mr. Brown did not return calls seeking comment on the decision.

Ken Wedholm of Stealth Concealment Solutions, which would provide and install the FRP material, said that in his experience no aesthetic variation would be seen between the old and the new material.

However similar the material would be, members of the ARB agreed that in dealing with the historic nature of the church, such change would be unnecessary and not acceptable under Village Code Section 65-5, which maintains that significant features should be altered as little as possible and shall be compatible with the historic character of the property. The board concluded that “the use of the FRP does not meet standard of the criteria … and is not an acceptable replacement for the existing wood sheathing.”

In addition, the board expressed uncertainty about how long the original wood would be stored for and said there would be no way to enforce that the material would be well-taken care of in storage and reinstalled properly if the antenna were removed, since MetroPCS or the church did not provide such information.

“The storage proposal is obviously offered as an inducement to the board to grant the application upon the assumption the historic materials will be preserved, but the board concludes it is unrealistic to consider such a plan as presented can be successfully monitored, enforced or achieved over such a long period of time,” the ARB said in its statement.

For now, the Corwin family will continue to wind and maintain the clock mechanism above the village.

“I think it’s smart to step back a moment at this time to deny the application,” Toni Lea Corwin said earlier this month. “I think it’s a very prudent approach. We’re looking forward to keeping clock running.”