“Santa Barbara County is one of their last big areas in the Central Coast that needs coverage,” he said. “This particular site will be one of the last to be approved.” Currently, there are more than two dozen telecommunication facilities in the county and two in Santa Ynez, on hilltops near the Gardner Ranch.
Gonzalez said while there are fewer facilities than, say, Verizon has in the county, the newer technology allows the company to cover the same number of people with fewer facilities. The company quietly started operating in the county several months ago and hopes to go live with advertising as early as December, he added. But before MetroPCS can begin putting up stores and buying advertising, the last facility must be approved by the county’s Central Board of Architectural Review.
The company plans on constructing a facility that will include a structure with three, five-foot panel antennas. It had initially wanted to install a 30- to 40-foot flagpole and mount the antennas below Old Glory, but CBAR prefers a windmill design that would replace the one currently standing.
Board members looked at the new windmill design at their Nov. 13 meeting but said it was too bulky and suggested a flagpole-windmill hybrid design. “What they’re requesting hasn’t been done before,” Gonzalez said. “But we’re going to try to replace the current windmill with a more structurally sound one and try to maintain some of the existing character of the area, hiding the antennas so there’s not much of a visual impact.”
The structure would only take a week to build, Gonzales said, but going through county planning could take months before it gets approval. MetroPCS is in 11,000 towns and has 6.3 million customers. A map of coverage areas is available at metropcs.com. jfoster@syvjournal.com