Lodestar Towers Inc., a developer and manager of multi-use transmission sites, broke ground on its Mt. Harvard facility in Southern California.
Lodestar said the facility is the nation’s first multi-use facility equipped to provide turnkey transmitter plant facilities for digital television in the Southern California region. The facility at Mt. Harvard will provide analog, digital and FM broadcast services as well as wireless capabilities including paging, cellular and specialized mobile radio.
Ron Gibbs, president of Lodestar and Mt. Harvard’s chief developer, said the company has signed letters of intent with broadcast companies in an effort to resolve technical issues before the site becomes operational. Several wireless carriers have expressed an interest in using the facility as well, he said.
The Mt. Harvard facility, which will provide uninterrupted coverage throughout the Los Angeles basin including parts of Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Barbara, is scheduled to be completed in December. The company spent two years securing the appropriate zoning permits from Los Angeles County.
The facility is located 1.5 miles south of Mt. Wilson in Los Angeles County and will be built on a 160-acre site, the company said. Six Lodestar employees with engineering backgrounds will man the facility, said Gibbs. The facility will feature tight security, only allowing access to those with individual access cards.
A 5,000-square-foot, two-story transmitter building will house the wireless equipment. Two 200-foot towers located 50 feet apart will be located at the facility with a horizontal platform running between the towers.
Inside the building will be 100 tons of air conditioning equipment, space for up to 300 antennas, radio-racking systems and a redundant fiber system installed by Pacific Bell. A 500-kilowatt generator will be located separately to provide for seven days of auxiliary power to the facility in the event of a power outage.
Lodestar said the site is ideally located because coverage is not blocked by mountain ranges or foothills. It also is located on land owned by the company, making the facility more cost efficient than sites on government-owned property.
Federal legislation passed last year requires users on government-owned sites to pay fair market value for private use of public land. Gibbs said during the first year of a five-year phase-in process, its rent on government properties has increased from between $4,000 and $5,000 per year per site to as high as $60,000 per year per site.
“Small companies could be forced out of business because they can’t afford the rent,” Gibbs said.
The Mt. Harvard site is well-suited for wireless communications in the Los Angeles basin, the company said.
“It is a strategically placed structure built to support and accommodate multiple operators of commercial and private wireless communications systems, offering Southern California wireless service providers a compelling advantage by reducing the need for additional tower facilities,” said Gibbs.
“Mt. Harvard helps to alleviate the issues of too many towers in the Los Angeles region, as the general population, including the residents and business communities in the area, are resistant to the proliferation of towers due to concerns for health and safety, and also for cosmetic reasons,” he continued.
Gibbs estimated potentially 150 towers in the facility’s coverage area could be eliminated.
