Planners nix radio tower

Frontiersman

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Planning Commission has decided not to allow an Anchorage broadcasting company a permit to build a 199-foot radio tower near Lazy Mountain.

Emerson Krueger, a borough planner, said the decision is not quite final. The commission ran out of time during its meeting this past week and did not get a chance to draw up and sign a resolution denying the permit. Krueger said the decision should be official “once that’s signed, which should happen early next week.”

Dennis Bookey, general manager for Anchorage Media Group, said he was surprised by the decision, especially considering the Borough’s planning staff had recommended the commission allow the permit, noting that the application had met all 22 criteria points set by the Borough.

“We’re reviewing all of our options at this point,” Bookey said about how the company could respond to the rejection. Those options include appealing the planning commission’s decision and seeking another spot to put the nearly 200-foot tower.

Anchorage Media Group operates six radio stations in Anchorage, including FM stations KBRJ, KMXS, KOOL and KWHL and AM stations KFQD and KHAR, Bookey said. The Valley station, he said, would broadcast at 100.9 FM and its 50,000 watts would be powerful enough to reach most of the Valley. He said the company plans to poll the Valley to see what kind of broadcast content residents would like, but the station’s format might include music, local events and sports.

Jim Sykes, president of the Lazy Mountain Community Council, said the commission has made the right decision. The community council had met with Anchorage Media Group representatives and opposes placing a broadcast tower on private property in the area.

“It’s not in compliance with the community plan and I think that people thought that they were being kind-of shafted by the process,” Sykes said.

Bookey said the company followed, to the letter, the process outlined by the Borough. The “community plan” Sykes spoke of is the Lazy Mountain Comprehensive Plan, which has been in the works since 2004. It passed the planning commission and has been set for a hearing before the Borough Assembly in March.

The plan discourages tall structures, Sykes said, adding residents were also worried about devaluation of their property, damage to the area’s viewshed and “adverse effects of living with a nearby radio station.”

Sykes, who counts himself a veteran of the broadcasting industry, said he didn’t think the company reviewed all of its options before choosing the Lazy Mountain site. Anchorage Media’s criteria — that the tower not be more than a certain distance from electrical utilities and from a road — were bound to put the tower in a residential area.

“We can’t be too far away from a road and too far away from power,” Bookey said.

But the site, he said, was chosen in a fashion similar to a tower at Point MacKenzie that sits on a farm and broadcasts for KFQD. The site works so well for KFQD that the company sought a similar area for its new tower.

“That was something that was a great debate in the meeting and we were informed it was an agricultural area,” Bookey said.

Although every tower the company has built has encountered a certain level of resistance, the level of resistance the Lazy Mountain proposal met is new to him, Bookey said.

Efforts were made to make sure the tower was as unobtrusive as possible, he said. Officials tried diligently to make sure the tower would not have to be lit, something on which the Federal Aviation Administration eventually insisted. But the company chose a spot not on Lazy Mountain, but in the foothills to the north of it behind a bluff, Bookey said.

“The entire site selection was done with that in mind,” he said. “That’s why we tried to look for a parcel that was 370 acres in size.”

As far as adverse effects from tower radiation, Bookey said one of the reasons the tower has to be 199 feet tall is so those adverse effects aren’t a factor.

In the end, Sykes said he doesn’t think the council or the community is against business or is opposed to having second Valley FM station. The community wants to help the company decide where to put a tower and come up with a compromise location all can agree on.

“I think there is that potential here,” he said. “I can’t guarantee it, because a lot of nerves have been touched.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.