Companies want another cell tower, significantly bigger supermarket
 
 By NANCY HILER September 21, 2006
 
 
Members of the North Bellmore Civic Association and other residents began scrutinizing two new, but familiar, construction proposals this week. 
The first is Ominipoint/T-Mobil's proposal to erect a cellular transmission tower, or cellular base station, atop the Party Giant store on Newbridge Road in North Bellmore, across the street from Newbridge Road School. The location also is steps from the North Bellmore Fire Department, where Verizon tried to install a wireless service antenna.

The other proposal is Stop & Shop's plan to expand the supermarket at Jerusalem Avenue and Newbridge Road, also in North Bellmore, into a superstore. The store is five blocks east of a former Rite-Aid store, where strongly contested plans for a Western Beef store were defeated.

Tower hearing adjourned
The Town of Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals last Wednesday adjourned a hearing to review Omnipoint/T-Mobil's plans for a 70-foot-high cellular antenna on Party Giant's roof. "A determination was not made" because the company "did not notify the public properly," a BZA spokesperson said. "The town gave them from Aug. 17 to 24 to send out public notices, and they failed to do so," she said. The zoning hearing was rescheduled for Jan. 10 at 3 p.m. at Town Hall in Hempstead.
Cell-phone towers cannot be banned because of "perceived" health risks, according to the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996. Research on the effects of radiofrequency (RF) energy exposures, characteristic of wireless phones and emitted by cellular antennas, has produced conflicting results thus far, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency responsible for protecting the public from harmful radiation emissions from consumer products.
Potential health effects were a major concern voiced by residents when Verizon wanted to locate a cell tower on the fire department's roof last year, since it is directly across the street from Newbridge Road Elementary School and close to many homes and businesses that are frequented by children. A growing body of research indicates that children are especially sensitive to environmental exposures compared to adults because their bodies are developing.
Verizon had tried to replace the fire department's communications tower with its own cell tower under a co-location lease agreement that would have allowed only the fire department to continue to use the tower. At the time, civic association members and other residents not only expressed concerns about possible health effects of cell-phone transmissions on residents, particularly children, but also that its presence could reduce property values of nearby homes, the Herald reported in November 2005. Nothing has changed.
Additionally, this latest cell-tower zoning appeal in North Bellmore comes on the heels of three other appeals before the BZA for cellular towers and antennas in neighboring communities over the last two weeks. On Sept. 6, the BZA adjourned (also to Jan. 10) a hearing for a 60-foot-high cellular service base station on the roof of a commercial building at Newbridge Road and Seventh Avenue in East Meadow, only two miles north of the North Bellmore spot. Also on Sept. 13, the BZA considered a request by Cingular Wireless to install a dozen four-foot cellular antennas atop the former Max & Gino's clothing store on Merrick Road in south Merrick. That hearing was adjourned to Dec. 6. And the BZA adjourned a hearing to consider a proposal by Omnipoint/T-Mobile to install 12 cell-phone antennas atop the Carefree Racquet Club on Jerusalem Avenue in North Merrick until Nov. 29.
More than 65 percent of Americans - close to 220 million users - subscribe to wireless services, and the cellular industry earned $60.5 billion in revenues in the first six months of 2005 alone.

About Omnipoint/T-Mobil
Europe's largest telecommunications company, Deutsche Telekom, bought Omnipoint, an East Coast telecommunications outfit, five years ago after also acquiring VoiceStream on the West Coast, a sought-after, highly-advanced communications company. The parent company became T-Mobil. Today, T-Mobil USA is a national provider of wireless voice, messaging and data services based in Bellevue, Wash.
"Omnipoint is the carrier that came into one Long Island client community and asked for, in one day, 83 new cell sites," reports the California-based Kreines & Kreines, a consulting firm that advises cities and counties in planning for cellular towers, in its publication PlanWireless.
The North Bellmore Civic Association was founded several years ago to organize residents' input into community issues, including redevelopment of an Army base and a cell tower was erected overnight on Jerusalem Avenue without what many considered sufficient community notification in 2000.

Proposed Stop & Shop expansion
Stop & Shop is considering a plan to expand the supermarket at Jerusalem Avenue and Newbridge Road into a superstore. Robert Bencivenga, the New York metropolitan area real-estate director for the Stop & Shop Company, was to discuss possible plans for the store and to present preliminary renderings of the proposed expansion at the North Bellmore Civic Association meeting on Sept. 18, after press time for this article.
In view of a defeated proposal last year for a large Western Beef store five blocks from Stop & Shop, attendees at Monday's meeting were expected to ask whether the building would be extended, and how possible increased traffic and parking needs might be addressed.
Although the current Stop & Shop store differs from the other large store proposal because of its existing presence and known community-mindedness to date, North Bellmore residents will examine the expansion plans in view of local traffic congestion issues. Their feedback will be provided to the store over the next few weeks. Information about the presentation will be reported in a future issue.
The Stop & Shop Supermarket Company, based in Quincy, Mass., operates 376 stores throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey.
The civic group's next meeting is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. in the North Bellmore Public Library's community room.