Spotlight on: Core Development Services: Firm hires former city planners to fast-track siting deployments

California has gained a reputation as one of the most difficult states to get towers sited. One company is using that ungainly standing as a way to differentiate its services from its competitors in the site-acquisition and development sector.
Core Development Services has hired 50 in-house employees to negotiate tower-siting issues with municipal jurisdictions. In fact, many of its employees are former city planners who sit on planning commissions on a voluntary basis to help city councils understand what is involved in getting wireless coverage in jurisdictions, said Keith Pinter, Core chairman and CEO. Being able to talk about land-use codes and explaining commerce, safety and demographic details to municipalities can shorten deployment times, he said.
As operators move forward with 4G deployments, they need to approach siting issues in a holistic manner, working with municipal planners to find creative coverage solutions rather than have contentious relationships that are decided on a case-by-case basis, Pinter said. “With 4G, you don’t want donut holes in coverage. You can’t approach it on an ad-hoc basis.”
The company works with most of the wireless operators in California (except AT&T Mobility) as well as tower companies building in the state. The company also works with residential and commercial real-estate developers so they think about wireless coverage in the early planning stages of their developments. “We work with builders as they develop master plans so they treat wireless like any other utility,” Pinter noted. For example, as one company built a new Sam’s Club, the signage was designed to accommodate a wireless antenna in the future.
The five-year-old company prides itself on long-term relationships with jurisdictions so they understand what is involved in getting coverage to an area, said Mark Carney, director of development at the firm. One employee, for example, sits on the environmental review board for Huntington Beach, Calif., an area that has a reputation as being difficult to site towers.
These long-term relationships can help city officials change their minds on how sites get built, Pinter said. For example, in Anaheim, a couple of wireless operators wanted to improve their coverage at an amusement park. Municipal planners wanted all of the equipment except the antennas to be stored underground. “Southern California planners like vaulting, but it brings its own problems,” Pinter said. Vaulting also can double the cost for carriers, turning a $100,000 project into a $200,000 one. “Vaulting is bad because there are OSHA issues and California has flash floods, so you can’t keep the equipment dry if it’s underground.”
4G deployments bring their own set of challenges as city leaders don’t understand whether these deployments are new builds or modifications to existing sites. Core, which worked with Clearwire Corp. to develop 170 sites in Northern California, said the sites are somewhere in between the two. “In 4G, there is no such thing as the last application filed with the city. It’s a long-term commitment. We want to partner with the cities to be creative.”