GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – There appears to be a solution for a cellphone tower that is blocking the full renovation of Green Bay West High School’s Del Marcelle Stadium, but Green Bay’s city council first needs to vote for it.
As FOX 11 has reported, the cost to move that cellphone tower would be around $1 million. The solution being discussed right now does not include that price tag, but it still involves costs that weren’t part of the original plan.
“The reason it’s in the way is those cellphone towers used to be behind the bleachers, but because everything was widened and pushed out farther, well now they are right in the middle of where the bleachers are to go,” said Green Bay Parks Director Dan Ditscheit.
School district officials have said they widened the field and track to accommodate WIAA events and they didn’t think moving the tower would be an issue.
Next Friday, Green Bay West is scheduled to play its first football game in the newly renovated stadium, a project that cost $9 million. It was part of a 2022 referendum that received 69% of voters.
The school district leases the land the stadium sits on from the city.
The district says the owner of the tower has agreed to move the equipment at the base of the tower, which would allow the bleachers to be completed right up to where the tower stands. It would also allow capacity to be the same as originally designed, for 2,019 people. The only difference is about 30 to 50 seats in the top corner of the bleachers will have an obstructed view of the endzone.
“We looked at all options as far as building up to that gear, up, over and around it, and the feasibility of that is, one, very expensive, and two, that would cut seats,” said Cale Pulczinski, the chief operating officer for the Green Bay Area Public School District.
The plan calls for the school district to pay an estimated $130,000 to move the tower equipment.
The cellphone tower owner would also pay the city less in a renegotiated lease – costing the city $155,421 in revenue over the rest of the lease, which ends after 2037.
“The issue perhaps that I look at is the city is being asked to take really a $150,000 haircut on a lease where we could just say we don’t want to do it, right?” said Green Bay City Council President Brian Johnson during Tuesday evening’s city finance committee meeting. “I don’t think that is being a good partner and I don’t want us to get there.”
Johnson asked Pulczinski during the meeting whether the district would be willing to pay for the revenue loss the city would incur under the proposal.
“At this point, we felt this proposal was a fair ask of the city in partnership with the improvements we’ve made on that site,” said Pulczinski, who added he would take the request back to the school board.
The city isn’t just facing a revenue loss from the one cellphone tower. There was another one that wasn’t even being used anymore, but the company was able to get out of its lease with the city once city officials asked for the tower to be relocated.
The city was unable to provide the terms of that lease during Tuesday’s meeting, but was able to say the revenue loss for this year was about $12,000.
“As we come to budget, we talk all the time about revenue, revenue, revenue, and it’s tough,” said Green Bay Alderperson Jen Grant. “We’re in another tough position I think.”
The city’s finance committee approved the proposal so the city council can take it up at its next meeting. In the meantime, it asked staff to work with the school district to see if it is willing to either buy the city out of its lease with the tower owner or reimburse the city for its revenue loss – something the district has previously said it is unwilling to use tax dollars for.
Comments