Sept. 24, 2025 — The Tippecanoe County Area Board of Zoning Appeals voted 6-0 to grant a variance reducing the required 40-foot front setback to 12 feet 5 inches for an eight-foot fence and related equipment cabinets and to approve a special exception for a primary communications tower on a leased 3,200-square-foot portion of a 22.839-acre tract southeast of South 350 West and South River Road.

Board members said the tower proposal and associated equipment were significant for local wireless coverage. The board acted after staff presented facts about floodplain constraints and the site’s location along the Wabash River Scenic Byway; staff recommended denying the setback variance as a self-imposed hardship but supported the tower special exception.

Christine Roehl, Area Plan Commission staff, told the board the property had been rezoned from R-1 to A and that much of the tract lies in the floodplain around the Wabash River. Roehl said the Scenic Byway designation limits signs but does not prohibit cellular towers. Based on her facts and findings, she said the setback variance appeared to arise from a self-imposed hardship and that staff therefore recommended denial of the variance while supporting the tower itself.

Brian Ramirez, representative for Select Towers 2 LLC, said the developer revised the site plan to move the monopole outside the 40-foot setback so the variance request addressed only the fence and equipment cabinets. Ramirez said the facility will be a 145-foot monopole with a 5-foot lightning rod and that the height was kept below the threshold that would require tower lighting because of nearby airport runway constraints. He said the initial carrier will be AT&T, which will provide FirstNet for public-safety users, and that the Department of Defense would also be accommodated; the tower was designed to handle four carriers.

Ramirez described equipment cabinets as outdoor units roughly the size of a refrigerator, approximately 6 to 7 feet tall. He said AT&T’s cabinet would be a 7-foot-wide walk-up cabinet set on a steel platform; because the area floods, the platform and cabinets would be elevated about four feet on concrete and steel footers. He said the developer would install screening, hunter-green slats at the base of the tower, and bollards around a pad-mounted transformer to protect equipment if a vehicle left the road. Ramirez also said the project includes a white-rock commercial-grade access improvement to accommodate construction vehicles.

Ramirez told the board he had spoken with Brooke Sauter of the Tippecanoe Historical Society, who heads the Feast of the Harvest Moon festival, and that she indicated the festival needed service to run credit-card transactions and for safety; Ramirez said Sauter told him she would submit a supporting letter but the board had not yet received it.

Commission discussion focused on the updated site plan, the cabinets’ locations relative to South River Road and the monopole, and equipment protection measures; staff and the petitioner confirmed the operative site plan would be amended to reflect the tower’s moved location. Despite staff’s recommendation to deny the variance, the board cast six ballots in favor of the variance and then cast six ballots in favor of the special exception for the primary communications tower.

The board’s action allows construction to proceed subject to any building, floodplain and utility permitting and any conditions imposed by the ABZA. The board did not state additional follow-up assignments in the record beyond the usual permitting steps.