Formal denial by planners puts radio tower on hold

PALMER — With her signature Thursday, Helga Larson, chair the Mat-Su Borough Planning Commission, finalized the commission’s denial of a permit to an Anchorage radio company to put a radio tower on Lazy Mountain.

Anchorage Media Group had proposed a 199-foot tower to be built 933 feet above sea level up Lazy Mountain. The company needed the permit to exceed a limit on structures over 100 feet. The company plans to broadcast a new Valley FM station of undetermined format. Currently, Anchorage Media, part of Morris Communications Co., has six Anchorage stations: KBRJ, KMXS, KOOL, KWHL, KFQD and KHAR.

The planning commission cited four reasons for denying the permit.

• The tower would change the community’s character.

• The site plan lacked the seal of a registered surveyor.

• The lease for the property did not meet the requirements of Borough codes regarding subdivisions.

• The tower would violate the spirit of the Lazy Mountain comprehensive plan.

Jim Sykes, head of the Lazy Mountain Community Council, said that while the comprehensive plan doesn’t say anything specific regarding towers, it discourages tall structures. Had those drafting the community plan not received consistent advice from the Borough to keep the plan general, it well have dealt directly with towers.

“They probably would have said ‘no towers’ … if they hadn’t got this constant advice at every meeting,” Sykes said of those drafting the Lazy Mountain plan.

Dennis Bookey, general manager of Anchorage Media Group, could not be reached following the final denial of the tower. He previously said he was surprised the permit would be denied in light of a recommendation by Borough staff to approve the permit.

In light of his tower application being denied, Bookey has said his options seem to be appealing the planning commission’s decision or looking for another site for the radio tower.

Emerson Krueger prepared the staff report Bookey mentioned. It lists 22 criteria, each of which were judged not to apply or to have been met.

“There are some subjective elements that are considered in conditional-use permits,” Krueger said. “So, any time that you have something that’s subjective, people can argue the other side and they’re justified in doing so.”

Lynn Fuller, a Lazy Mountain resident, is one who would disagree.

But, even if the company had met the Borough’s requirements, what really upset area residents and led the community council to vote not to support the construction of a tower was that they weren’t asked to submit input.

Maybe it wasn’t required for the company to involve the community in picking a tower site, but it should have, she said.

“We asked, ‘Will you listen to our concerns about siting and are you amenable to switching locations based on community desires?’ They were not willing to reconsider siting,” Fuller said.

Fuller said she believes her home would be most impacted by a potential tower. She said her home is about as close to the tower as the people who own the land on which it was to be built. But her home has a better view of the proposed tower site.

“Our house was built to view the top half of Lazy Mountain,” Fuller said. “We would have been in our bedroom and living room looking out our window to a 200-foot tower.”

It’s not that Fuller feared the light the Federal Aviation Administration required be placed on the tower would turn night into day in her living room. Nor was she worried the tower would interfere with her use of electronic equipment. Those effects, she said, are difficult to predict.

But one of the planning staff’s criteria was that the company be sure to take into account effects across property lines.

That the site is visible from her windows would seriously damage her viewshed, and would increase, however significantly, the light coming through her windows proves Anchorage Media Group didn’t meet this requirement, she said.

“For the greater community, the impacts might have been harder to avoid but they were easy to avoid for our home,” Fuller said.

It’s one of a handful of requirements she believes weren’t met.

Bookey, for his part, said in his previous interview that the company had sought out a large lot and had chosen a spot on that lot that minimized impacts, in part by obscuring the tower behind a bluff. He said the tower was to be built not on the mountain itself but in the foothills near it.

Fuller said she hasn’t seen any bluff. As far as whether the tower was on the mountain or near it, she said she doesn’t know what a geologist would say, but she considers herself to be on the mountain and the tower, as elevation goes, is below her.

“People are willing to talk and compromise and not just say ‘no,’ but you have to start out on the right foot and you have to be willing to say you will listen too,” Fuller said.