Village of South Jacksonville Still In Pursuit of AT&T Tower

By Benjamin Cox on October 11, 2022 at 8:59am

The Village of South Jacksonville says it’s still pursuing AT&T to place a new cellphone tower within the corporate limits.

Despite hitting a lull in new information the last several weeks, Village Trustee Todd Warrick says he has met with AT&T representative Chris Warwick within the last few weeks to discuss finding a suitable location for the tower.

Warrick says that AT&T is looking for properties and landowners within a certain range to place the tower in an optimal location: “They are actively looking at other properties around the area. However, some of the properties that have been suggested to them are not strategically in a good place to be put in the middle of the dead zone and take care of most of the [coverage] problem that is out there.”

Warrick says they are looking at a location on private property just south of the Sequoia Drive police/fire station: “That field south of the police department-fire department. That is probably the best place that’s not on public property. They are still looking into that. They are trying to get ahold of the owners of this family farm that’s managed by a professional company. You have to go through the professional company through the family. The family has an attorney, so you know how long attorneys take with their work.”

Warrick says once an agreement is reached with a piece of property, it will still take a significant amount of time to get the new tower up and running: “It will be about a year by the time they get that tower built. It’s hard to get everything. It’s the supply chain. They [also] have to get a permit from the FCC. During Covid, the FCC did not give out any permits for those, so they are currently backlogged. It’s not one of these things that is going to happen over night or in the next six months, but it’s happening.”

Warrick says that AT&T Chris Warwick will attend the next Committee of the Whole meeting for the village later this month to provide further updates and a presentation.