Stony Brook Harbor Is the Latest Front in America’s Cell Tower Fight

The Knox School stands on 40 waterfront acres overlooking Stony Brook Harbor. Soon, the century-old campus could also overlook a 140-foot cell tower.

The telecommunications company behind the project says it’s needed to close a gap in wireless coverage in Nissequogue, a small village on Long Island’s North Shore. Residents, meanwhile, have repeatedly argued that the tower would intrude on the community’s prized coastal views.

“The installation would introduce a prominent and permanent visual intrusion that is neither necessary nor well-suited to its setting,” Michael Utevsky, mayor of neighboring Head of the Harbor, wrote in a January letter opposing the project.

In April, the Nissequogue Planning Board denied a necessary permit for the project to move forward, citing “inconsistencies” in the proposal. The telecommunications company sued the following month, arguing that no feasible alternative site existed and that the plan complied with federal and local laws.

The dispute is now headed for court. But the fight unfolding around Stony Brook Harbor is just one installment of a conflict that has been playing out across the country for nearly a half-century. As demand for mobile technology keeps growing, cell-tower proposals have remained a source of bitter local conflict, even as the infrastructure becomes harder for communities to avoid.

Out of sight, out of mind

The objections vary from place to place. But one of the most persistent is also the easiest to see: Residents don’t want a large industrial structure dominating the landscape outside their homes.

As a solution, some companies have adopted camouflage for the technology. 

One of the industry’s earliest designs was the “monopine”—a cell tower made to look like a pine tree—developed in the early 1990s by Larson Concealment Solutions.

By 1996, the Telecommunications Act was accelerating the wireless buildout by limiting local governments’ ability to prohibit service outright. At the same time, municipalities retained authority over many land-use and aesthetic questions, creating a market for towers designed to appear less industrial.

Larson responded with an expanding catalog of designs, including cacti, crosses, flagpoles, and even church steeples. Today, the company offers custom solutions intended to “blend telecommunications infrastructure seamlessly into natural and urban environments, providing aesthetic appeal without compromising RF performance or structural integrity,” according to its website.

And now, you can find these towers-in-disguise hiding in plain sight across the country. While there is no official tally, a single producer estimates it has more than 10,000 sites nationwide.

But the additional design doesn’t come cheap. Industry estimates suggest that camouflage towers can cost roughly 1.5 to 3 times as much as standard monopoles because of the extra materials, engineering, installation, and maintenance involved.

But in communities where local rules or political opposition make an exposed tower nearly impossible to approve, that expense can become part of the price of building the network.

“Concealment structures frequently represent the only technically and commercially viable solution for deploying infrastructure in regulated or community-sensitive settings,” said a recent article in Structure, a magazine for structural engineers.

Even so, camouflage doesn’t always make residents any more willing to accept it.

In Conroe, TX, promises of a pine tree design wasn’t enough to quell local backlash to a proposed 160-foot tower. Nearby homeowners argued that a tower of that height didn’t belong in a residential area, no matter how many plastic branches were attached to it. And in February, the Conroe City Council declined to advance the zoning variance needed for the project.

One home was sold for 4% less—was the tower to blame?

Resistance like that in Conroe and Stony Brook can look superficial at first glance. But in real estate, aesthetic concerns are often inseparable from financial ones.

Levi Rodgers, CEO of LRG Realty in San Antonio, TX, recently sold a home about 200 feet from a tower that nearby residents were actively protesting.

The property still found a buyer within 21 days, he says, but it was sold for about 96% of the value of comparable homes on the same street.

“Honestly, the impact of infrastructure like cell towers has less to do with the value of homes than most buyers think, but it’s not zero,” Rodgers tells Realtor.com®. “Here in our San Antonio market, homes within maybe 500 feet that are in direct view of a cell tower sell for about a 2% to 4% discount.”

Once a tower is obscured by fences, buildings, trees, or neighboring homes, he adds, the effect becomes much harder to detect.

That distinction—between proximity and visibility—also appears in the limited academic research available on the subject. A study of home sales near cell towers in Savannah, GA, found that homes closest to the structures were sold at discounts of up to 7.6%, with any measurable effect disappearing at roughly 1,500 feet.

Other research has produced larger estimates, including surveys in which real estate professionals reported perceived discounts of as much as 20%. But those figures are based on agent opinions rather than completed sales, making them less conclusive than transaction-level studies.

Regardless, the research suggests that proximity to a large, clearly visible structure can narrow the pool of interested buyers—and that alone can affect the final price. Even a modest discount can add up quickly: A 4% reduction is about $20,000 on a $500,000 home.

A powerful source of revenue vs. local resistance

What’s interesting is that these projects are often landing on community sites like schools, churches, and other public property. And for the institutions that agree to host the equipment, the cell tower premium can look very different.

In Lumpkin County, GA, for example, one school-district telecommunications lease brings in $1,000 a month and is set to run through 2071. A second lease generates $1,674 a month and runs through 2030, according to the district’s latest audited financial statements.

The monthly payments are modest compared with the cost of operating a school system. But the land required for a tower is relatively small, the carrier generally pays to install and maintain the equipment, and the revenue can continue for decades.

As a result, some have turned the arrangements into formal programs.

Fairfax County Public Schools is a good example. The district hosts monopoles across dozens of school and administrative properties, with many incorporated into athletic field lighting. The district collects recurring rent, annual escalators, and fees when additional wireless providers add equipment to a site.

Schools and churches can be especially attractive to carriers because they often control large, long-held parcels embedded in neighborhoods where companies need better coverage or more capacity. Campuses may even already contain rooftops, steeples, light poles, parking lots, and athletic fields, where equipment can be installed or concealed.

For a school district or congregation facing tight budgets, the pitch can be appealing: Turn a small piece of underused land or vertical space into a new stream of income without selling the property or raising taxes.

But the arrangements can also carry risks for the host.

In Boston, Global Ministries Christian Church nearly lost its property after a telecom lease involving antennas in its steeple contributed to almost $200,000 in disputed property taxes. T-Mobile ultimately agreed to cover the back bill, according to reporting on the case.