A Cell Tower May Grow In Fairmont Park

As the city considers permitting a first-time ever use of park land for a cell phone tower in Fair Haven Heights, neighbors have banded together to raise questions about forest destruction, community-building, and government responsiveness.

They call their new group Friends of Fairmont Park (FFP). The group formed in June.

After a meeting of the group this past Saturday, co-leaders Paul Pasquaretta and Sylvia Dorsey gave a tour of the under-utilized but now no longer un-loved park. They expressed their concerns about the possible first-time ever rental of city land to a telecommunications company for a cell tower.

“We don’t think a cell phone tower is a good idea, but we want to engage the city in a meaningful way if there can be some benefit for the park,” said Pasquarett.

The group did not form to oppose the proposal; it didn’t know about the proposal at the time. An invitation from Urban Resources Initiative. (URI) to help with the park’s evolving community garden folks led to FFP getting in touch with Christy Hass, the acting director of the Department of Parks,Recreation and Trees.

At a meeting last month with Hass about how the city can help the park, a beautiful wild spot that runs from Clifton Street down to Quinnipiac, the news about the cell tower emerged, but without details.

“It was a very positive meeting, but we were blown away by the cell tower” plans, said Dorsey.

Since that meeting, the city has sent in crews to move large rocks and clear undergrowth that had been long used as concealment for a ​“love nest” by local prostitutes, said Dorsey.

Dorsey is lead gardener of the substantial vegetable and flower gardens that flank the entryway to the park, which is set by the old Charles Ives estate.

Mayoral spokeswoman Anna Mariotti confirmed Monday that a proposal is pending to erect a cell phone tower in Fairmont Park. It would be the first such use of park land, but the situation is far from the done deal that some FFP members feared.

“The proposed lease is being submitted to a committee of the Board of Aldermen. It will have public hearings,” and the final decision is the board’s, Mariotti said.

She said the maximum height of the tower would be approximately 40 feet, and it might even look like a tree.

For general approval and details the proposal will also go before the City Plan Commission and other municipal bodies that the aldermen deem appropriate, she added.

She said the proposal has been submitted by the Cohen and Wolf law firm on behalf of T Mobile, which wants to build the tower in the park in exchange for a monthly $2,200 payment. By the terms of the proposal the money would go to the Parks Commission, with a 3 percent annual escalation.

The money would be available for use making improvements in Fairmont Park, but not be limited to Fairmont, she said.

Fairmont Park is girdled by curving Clifton Street and runs down to Quinnipiac Avenue, with a looped ridge trail and several smaller ones that cut across the center of the circle. The FFP, now with the help of URI intern Jeffrey Yost, has made progress in thinning and triaging trees. The dense clumps of forest remain badly overgrown by bittersweet and other invasive species, said Pasquaretta.

Those serious arboreal challenges present a tantalizing dilemma for FFP.

The city has approved many cell phone towers atop buildings, even historical ones, with the rent going to the building owners. The process usually goes through the Board of Zoning Appeals and other bodies for public input.

In this case the landlord would be the city, a first.

If the plan goes through, to what ends might the rental revenue be directed?

Tree-of-Heaven v. Cell Tower?

With the landlord as the city — if some agreed-on plan could be worked out, and that’s a big ​“if” — perhaps that revenue help the FFP and go directly to Fairmont Park improvements, Pasquaretta speculated

“Could we have a pavilion here? A playscape?” he fantasized.

He said that would help knit the Heights community together because it currently has no no gathering place.

Yet at what cost? If the tower were to go on the ridge, how would that impact the native oaks, beech trees, and other forest trees that the FFP crew is trying to help survive? The group is considering that question, too.

The park has historically been neglected. Pasquaretta wondered aloud if this may have been one reason plans for such a tower were planted in the Heights.

A major arboreal makeover could give Fairmont the distinctive wild, off-the-beaten path but welcoming quality it now lacks. That may not be doable without an infusion of dollars; might those come from cell tower income?

“If they’d cut down the tree-of-heaven for me,” Dorsey said, she might be able to live with some kind of tower.

Mariotti said one outcome might be a cell phone tower that looks like a tree, of the kind that exist along the Merritt Parkway.

The current proposal has evolved over three years, she said. It began with T Mobile asking for a tower atop 181 Clifton St., a nursing home. ​“That was a flat out ​‘no’” from the mayor and other officials, Marotti reported.