Oct. 12--BELLINGHAM -- Verizon Wireless wants to install a cell phone tower along lower Meridian Street in the Columbia neighborhood. Neighbors concerned about health and their views are rallying to fight it.

This is round No. 2 in the fight to install a tower there.

Verizon is proposing a tower up to 100 feet tall at 2615 Meridian St., behind Magas Insurance Agency at Meridian and North streets. It's on commercially zoned property but right across an alley from homes in a residential zone.

"The last time this came up, almost a hundred people showed up at the informational meeting against the tower," wrote neighbor Linina Pfeffer in the neighborhood's e-mail newsletter. "Between that and letters to Verizon and City Council, we got them to back down. Hopefully, Verizon is just testing the waters again and with enough community outcry, we can make this go away -- maybe for good this time!"

Verizon is proposing a "stealth" tower, designed to look like it's not a cell tower, company spokesman Scott Charlston said. The tower is also 20 feet shorter than the previously proposed one.

"It's an effort to meet community concerns about the aesthetics," he said.

The 2005 meeting was an effort by the company to gauge neighborhood concerns about the project.

"We want to know what a community is feeling about a potential cell site," he said.

Cell towers are a sensitive topic in Columbia. In 2003, T-Mobile proposed installing one on Henry Street in the heart of the neighborhood. About 150 neighbors rallied at a project meeting, before T-Mobile came to an agreement to instead put antennas at Bellingham Technical College and the Bellingham Fire Department station along Broadway, city planner Jackie Lynch said.

To install a cell tower, companies have to get a conditional-use permit from the city's hearing examiner. City law says the following about where to put them:

-- Cell companies should first try to put them in industrial zones.

-- Second best is commercial, institutional and public zones.

-- Third is mixed residential-commercial zones.

-- The last area is in purely residential zones.

The company has the burden of proving it has exhausted its options in higher-priority zones before the city will give it a permit, Lynch said.

Neighbors say it's not a good location.

"It's huge. It'll be 100 feet tall, and this is a residential neighborhood," Pfeffer said in an interview. "I know they're needed, but I think it's important to find places where they're appropriate."

Bill Magas, owner of Magas Insurance, doesn't see the location as a big problem. His parents, Lawrence and Marilyn Magas, own the property.

"If they don't build it here, they'll build it somewhere else," he said. "I don't know, there's not really a view around here."

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