By: Lea Kahn
The Cellco Partnership is disappointed that it lost the latest round in its battle to build a cell tower in Lawrence Township, according to an e-mail from a company official.
The release states that Verizon Wireless, Cellco’s parent company, "has gone through an exhaustive and thorough process in an attempt to improve wireless coverage in the northeastern part of Lawrence Township," said Joseph Berberian, the company’s director of engineering, in an e-mail to The Lawrence Ledger last week.
"Obviously, we are disappointed with the decision," Mr. Berberian wrote. "We want our customers to know that we have done and will continue to do our best to try to improve the wireless service in the area."
Two weeks ago, the Appellate Division upheld a state Superior Court judge’s decision to throw out a lawsuit filed by the company against the township Zoning Board of Adjustment. The three-judge panel handed down its decision June 19.
While the Appellate Division agreed with Cellco that there is a gap in its telecommunications coverage within Lawrence, the company failed to show that it made a good faith effort to locate alternative sites, according to the decision.
The Cellco Partnership sued the zoning board for denying its use variance request to build a 120-foot-tall cell tower on the Peterson’s Nursery and Garden Market property on Route 206, near Province Line Road, in 1998.
The use variance was necessary because a cell tower is not a permitted use in the Environmental Protection-1 residential zone, and because it would have represented the third use on the site the nursery, two billboards and the cell tower.
The Cellco Partnership sued the zoning board in state Superior Court in 2000 and lost. Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg threw out the company’s lawsuit. The company appealed the judge’s decision to the Appellate Division in May 2001.
It took the Appellate Division more than a year to review the transcript of the zoning board’s public hearing on the Cellco Partnership application and make a ruling. Attorneys for the Cellco Partnership and the Zoning Board of Adjustment made their respective cases before the judges April 24.
The Appellate Division found that the denial of the use variance application did not violate the federal Telecommunications Act’s mandate that local zoning authorities may not prohibit the provision of wireless telecommunications services. The ruling supported the zoning board’s decision that the proposed parcel was not the best location for a cell tower.
