Land management firms view the construction of wireless networks as a landscape of opportunity for which they can supply quick lists of potential properties and zoning expertise.
“To acquire a site, you don’t necessarily need to be a telecommunications person,” said Henry D. Allen, senior managing director of CB Commercial Real Estate Group Inc. “Many times, you need to be a real estate person. We already have people in the markets and have local market knowledge,” Allen said. CB Commercial is the third largest property management company in the United States, handling more than 91 million square feet of space.
Also increasing its profile in wireless is Rhode Island-based Northeastern Land Services Ltd., a land consulting and site acquisition firm serving numerous industries, including telecommunications, pipeline, electric and transportation.
NLS’ telecommunications division has headquarters in the Dallas area, doing business as The NLS Group. It offers SiteQual service, which lists properties that qualify for wireless use according to zoning specifications.
“We provide the client with a backbone network of sites which are overlaid onto current zoning information so RF engineers have the intelligent details they need when laying out their grid network,” said Steven Schulke, vice president of The NLS Group.
CB Commercial and The NLS Group are among real estate companies offering property and zoning expertise, and marketing their services as a way for licensees building wireless networks to save precious time and effort. Both groups stress the need for today’s operators to locate sites prior to designing the network, saying the greatest holdup for network buildout-historically and currently-is zoning regulation.
To capitalize on the wireless explosion, CB Commercial formed the CB Commercial Telecommunications Site Services joint venture earlier this year. The venture includes John Donoghue and John O’Brien of Hauppauge, N.Y.-based DarkNet Inc. Donoghue has been involved in site acquisition for American Personal Communications, which is building a personal communications services network in the Washington, D.C., area.
The CB Commercial site group intends to provide site location and development service, assist with zoning and title research, and offer project management. “We’ll be a sole source provider so operators won’t have to work with 30 different companies, Donoghue said. “We’re not reinventing the site acquisition business, we’re just improving it.”
The venture is developing a nationwide list of friendly sites, such as rooftops and properties where CB Commercial has an agreement to market the site to the telecom industry.
CB Commercial also has a portfolio asset management program called CBC-ACE, a Windows-based computer program that provides location maps, latitude and longitude points, utility availability, environmental status, roof plans, tenant names and addresses, current lease details and building photos.
“Clearly, one of the keys to rapid cell site deployment is negotiating and acquiring a number of sites from a single landlord,” CB Commercial said. For instance, in D.C., Donoghue obtained a number of sites from a local housing authority, the company said.
The NLS Group’s SiteQual service includes a database of properties that have existing sites for co-location. Zoning information is gathered by a site acquisition team and interpreted by zoning specialists. A list of “pre-qualified” sites is compiled and the properties are placed under four classifications, according to the ease of zoning approval. The information is put into map form on a city-by-city basis. Existing and possible RF sites are plugged into that map to provide a comprehensive overview.
