A closer look at rooftop technology
Published on May 23rd, 2001
STONEHAM, MA - Some citizens are upset about satellite dishes on top of the RCN building at 430 Main Street. The appeals period has expired for these dishes, but there’s hope for the future of the Stoneham skyline.
“I feel sorry for the residents on Maple Street and in that area of town that have to look at them (the dishes),” said Edie Previdi of Elmhurst Road.
RCN and the building’s owners followed the rules to ask for a needed exception to Stoneham zoning, but the decision made by the Board of Appeals highlights some fuzzy signals about the future of rooftop technology. (Local builder Joe Cunningham controls the building under a long term lease from the Bloomberg family. RCN rents from Cunningham.)
The Board of Appeals decides when to grant exceptions to the Stoneham Zoning By-Law. Zoning ideally maintains a high quality of life for all citizens while interfering as little as possible with individual property rights.
Board members have discretion to grant variances, or exceptions, to zoning rules when the shape of a lot or structure, soil conditions, or topography of the land make following the rules impossible or possible only at a significant financial loss to the property owner (Mass General Laws, Chapter 40A).
An important limit on interpretation of hardships is that they cannot be self-created.
Identifying a hardship is a prerequisite to granting a variance.
Several recent cases before the Board suggest that if members interpret the definition of “hardship” more strictly, fewer antennae may go up.
The Board can consider the detriment or benefit to the public when making decisions.
On Feb. 15, 2001, the Board of Appeals granted RCN a variance from height restrictions, allowing the dishes to extend 14 feet from the 45 foot high rooftop of 430 Main St., because the dishes could not function anywhere else on the property. The dishes receive cable television signals from a satellite. The signal travels into the building and is processed so that it can be sent along wires to people’s homes.
The financial hardship to RCN would have been substantial if the variance were denied because RCN had designed and constructed a building to process signals that only rooftop satellite dishes could receive.
The public will get cable when RCN goes online, and the dishes are only visible from a few spots. No neighbors complained at the public hearing.
This looks like an obvious approval. But RCN rented the building and set up the relay station technology inside. The Board could have ruled that RCN created its own hardship. There was no ledge or odd-shaped lot, just a building that was too high under Stoneham Zoning for structures to sit on top of it.
On April 26, 2001, the Board of Appeals denied a request for a height variance from XM Satellite Radio. The company wanted to replace a 70 inch whip antenna with a 26 inch satellite dish on top of one of the Stonehill Towers apartment buildings.
The company argued that the dish would only work there. People would get this new radio band when it came online. And XM officials said that the company would suffer a financial hardship if the technology was not allowed because the system wouldn’t be able to serve customers.
The Board denied the variance, writing that what XM argued “does not constitute a hardship under the legal criteria.”
The Vice Chairman of the Board of Appeals, Robert Saltzman, stands behind the XM decision and he was absent for the RCN ruling.
Saltzman also went out of his way in an April 26, 2001, decision to explain that the Board allowed changes to police and fire antennae on Stonehill Towers because the antennae were a “pre-existing non-conformity (a concept similar to grandfathering)” as well as a benefit to the public.
As term limits require Board of Appeals Chairman Chuck DeCoste to step down, Saltzman may take the gavel. DeCoste was not available for comment.
Two things remain true about rooftop technology in Stoneham: uncertainty and options.
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