Two back-to-back cellular towers disguised as evergreens were approved by the Adirondack Park Agency at its February meeting, a move that will bring better coverage to the hamlet and camps of Raquette Lake, NY as well as to a notorious dead zone in the Route 28 corridor.
Hailed as one of the crown jewels of the Adirondack Park, Raquette Lake spans over 100 miles of pine-covered shoreline along New York State Route 28, a well-known wireless dead zone. In an announcement made on February 17, by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA), two cell towers are slated to be sited next to one another to provide better coverage for the village, camps of Raquette Lake, and the highly traveled Route 28 corridor. T-Mobile and AT&T will each occupy a tower.
According to The Adirondack Explorer, APA analyst Virginia Yamrick said that “two towers were deemed by the staff to be better than one, because a single pole would have to be slightly higher to accommodate both carriers, and would stand out more.”
Aesthetics were a key part of the discussion among APA staff members weighing in on approval of the towers. Following simulated balloon tests, staff determined that the towers won’t be visible from most of Raquette Lake, but a stretch of the Brown Tract Inlet (known for the Adirondack Canoe Classic) will have a partial view of the towers.
To remedy concerns over visibility, the agency proposed faux evergreen concealment designs to create an imperfect and more natural look. According to The Adirondack Explorer, APA believes this design technique will fool the human eye into thinking that a 90-foot utility pole is really and truly a white pine.
Yamrick stated that the “unnatural evergreens more or less trick the eye into thinking that this must be what trees look like, giving the viewer a greater tendency to skim over the scene instead of snagging on one out-of-place feature.”
Perhaps it’s worth a canoe ride down the picturesque Brown Tract Inlet to see if the eye ‘snags’ the 90-foot towers.
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