CB1 Slams City's Plan for Towering 5G Transmitters on Downtown Sidewalks

A Link5G pole on Mulberry Street in Chinatown, which is designed to provide space, power and fiber connectivity to a broadband carrier that would install its own radio transmitter. At street level is a kiosk for free WiFi service. This installation reportedly will have to come down because it is across the street from a city landmark and was rejected by the State Historic Preservation Office. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib 

The city has plans to mount seven three-story-high poles for 5G cell phone transmission on Lower Manhattan sidewalks, and Community Board 1 is pushing back. 

At its meeting on Tuesday, the board called for a pause to the rollout of the plan for Lower Manhattan until a variety of concerns are addressed. The position is in line with 14 other community boards as well as civic and historic preservation groups around the city that have either opposed the structures in their neighborhoods, or advocated for a moratorium on the installations.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, one of a number of elected officials who are critics of the plan, has called on the city to “slow the expansion of 5G infrastructure in residential areas and focus on commercial corridors” until a variety of concerns are addressed. Among those concerns are aesthetics, especially in or near historic districts and buildings, possible health impacts, and privacy. The poles are also seen as potential sidewalk obstructions.

“Let’s slow down the process. Let’s consider how we might be able to use this infrastructure that we already have in the city for 5G on tops of buildings, on poles that already exist,” said Alice Blank, the committee’s chair and the vice chair of CB1.

The proposed locations for the poles include: 90 Wall Street; 88 Pine Street; 75 South Street; 110 William Street; 8 Spruce Street; 66 Harrison Street; and 100 North Moore Street. 

CB1’s Landmarks and Historic Preservation Committee found the poles to be “entirely inappropriate for the proposed locations which comprise the city’s most significant historic areas in FiDi, Tribeca and the South Street Seaport.” Board members complained that the city did not provide renderings to show how the poles would look in those locations. (Jason Friedman, chair of the committee, took it upon himself to create his own renderings for the committee, two of which are shown above.)

LinkNYC kiosks, which have been on the city’s sidewalks since 2016 as pay phone replacements, offer charging stations, free nationwide calling, and a tablet to access city services. The proposed Link5G poles, described by Gothamist as resembling giant tampon applicators, would stand atop new 9-and-a-half foot LinkNYC kiosks for a total height of 32 feet, with a 32-inch LED screen attached. Advertising on the screens is meant to help pay for the program. The new poles would provide space for 5G network carriers to install their transmitting equipment.

There are about 2,000 kiosk/transmission towers planned for the city. In an effort to bring better WiFi connectivity to “equity community districts,” about 90% of them would go above 96th Street and in the outer boroughs. Resistance is coming from some of the largely affluent Manhattan neighborhoods, like those in the CB1 area, where wireless coverage is not lacking. 

“We are incredibly fortunate to have in CB1 a [business improvement district] that does free Wi-Fi, we have Battery Park City Authority that does free Wi-Fi, we have Brookfield Place and the Oculus,” CB1 Chair Tammy Meltzer said at last week’s Environmental Protection Committee meeting. “We have a ton of free Wi-Fi in our neighborhood, we have a ton of good, robust signals and services.”

Taina Prado, chief of staff for the Downtown Alliance, which provides free WiFi for Lower Manhattan below Murray Street, agreed. “I really don’t fully understand the need,” she said, “for this neighborhood to have these structures, given the grid network, the small sidewalks, the limited space that we have compared to other neighborhoods in the outer boroughs.”

At that meeting, Robert Sokota, president of CityBridge Wireless, the company contracted by the city to install and maintain the equipment, responded that an internet carrier has committed to putting transmitting radios in the seven Downtown towers. “I think it’s very telling that a carrier would want to invest in these locations,” he said. “They’re not going to just throw money where no problem exists.” Mobile communication traffic increases 20% to 30% each year, Sokota noted. “They constantly are in planning mode, trying to figure out where we can ensure [coverage], where we can place radios, where we can place antennas to make sure that people’s cellular phones continue to work at the levels that those people expect.” 

Critics, including CB1 members, have also raised concerns about what they see are potential health effects from the radio waves. Sokota said that 5G is a just a continuation of the cellular communication that has been around for 30 years. “The overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that there are no adverse health effects,” he said. 

“If you really believe that there are adverse health impacts from cellular radios, I would posit that your bigger problem is that people are sitting around watching this meeting [remotely] and looking at a computer screen several feet from their face,” Sokota said. “Your bigger concern,” he added, “is not what is sitting on the street 32 feet in the air. It’s the fact that you have a TV in your house or you have a computer screen that you stare at.”

But because 5G is a relatively new technology, Blank responded, “there hasn’t been time to properly test whether it’s safe. There’s also a lack of scientific analysis on the potential impacts of 5G exposure in densely populated areas of a city.” 

CB1 is among the groups that are consulting parties to the State Historic Preservation Office, which is required by the Federal Communications Commission for landmarks and environmental review of each of the proposed sites.