A 5G 'Smart' Tower, with Ad Screen, on North Moore Street? CB1 Says No.

Left: The section of sidewalk on North Moore Street where CityBridge wants to install a 32-foot 5G WiFi transmission tower with advertising screen. Right: Rendering of the tower and screen. Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib (sidewalk); LinkNYC (rendering)  

Community Board 1 is saying no way to a 32-foot-tall cell tower with an LED advertising display on North Moore Street.

CityBridge, the company that installs the city’s LinkNYC [1] kiosks and Link5G [1] WiFi-transmitting poles—and sells the ads that pay for them—is appealing a decision by a state agency that approved the tower, but rejected the proposed 30-inch-wide LED advertising screen that would go with it. CB1 is advisory to the agency, the State Historical Preservation Office (SHPO).

The board’s Landmarks and Preservation Committee this month listened to the CityBridge president make his case for a pole-plus-ad-screen on the North Moore Street tower.

The proposed “smart” pole would be outside Borough of Manhattan Community College’s parking lot, between Greenwich and West Streets.

CB1 had already taken a dim view [2] of the city’s effort to install the poles in seven Lower Manhattan locations, having rejected them all when they came before the board last September. SHPO has since ordered two of the proposed Link5G towers, at 110 William Street and 8 Spruce Street, moved or modified. It rejected advertising screens on the North Moore Street pole and another that is proposed to be a block away on Harrison Street across the street from the landmarked Federal-era townhouses. The board’s Executive Committee issued a resolution advising the agency to deny all four appeals. The full community board is scheduled to ratify the resolution on Tuesday.

“The community board has not changed its position on this nor will they,” Alice Blank, CB1 vice chair, said at the Landmarks and Preservation Committee meeting.

The towers, which provide free WiFi service within a range of about 100 feet, include a LinkNYC kiosk. The kiosks have been on the city’s sidewalks since 2016 as pay phone replacements and offer charging stations, free nationwide calling, and a tablet to access city services. The towers that are in or close to historic districts or buildings require State Historical Preservation Office approval.

Robert Sokota, president of CityBridge, argued that there would be no historic impact to placing the tower in front of the college’s parking lot.

But Blank and others say their objections to the tower go beyond aesthetics. For one thing, she said, that block of North Moore Street will be torn up for the installation of a flood wall as part of the Battery Park City Authority’s resiliency project [3]. 

“Why are you putting it there when there obviously is going to be a conflict,” Blank asked Sokota at the committee meeting.

Sokota acknowledged that “there is potentially going to be a conflict at some point,” but noted the company has had “ongoing discussions” with the contractor on coordinating the two projects. “The wall that they were contemplating was closer to the building,” he said. 

“Yeah, but Robert,” Blank shot back, “you have to be able to walk down the sidewalk.” She added, “I’m not convinced that can be done.” (A spokesman for the company later told the Trib that the pole would meet the city’s required 8-foot clearance for pedestrians.)

Then came another issue. Is it needed? Ninety percent of the poles are sited in neighborhoods deemed to be under-resourced “equity community districts.” Lower Manhattan, said committee member Jared Sheer, is not one of them. “We’re talking about some of the most expensive real estate in the world where it’s hard to believe that there is not ample connectivity,” he said. 

The sites, Sokota responded, “were actually chosen by one of the cellular providers as an area where it needed additional coverage.” He declined to name the company.