A cell-phone tower doesn't have to be an ugly steel pole with antennas at the top. It can take the form of a tree, a bell tower, a silo, a steeple or just about any other tall structure you can imagine.

Towers that look like pine trees will go up in Brandermill and a site near Harrowgate Road in Chesterfield County, if a plan by Invisible Towers is accepted.

Company executives Van Thompson and Mark Faris held a meeting for Brandermill residents last week to show examples of their projects. Questions from the audience at Brandermill Church primarily concerned the possibility of health risks. The American Cancer Society, on its Web site, concludes that cell-phone towers are unlikely to cause cancer or any other health problems, based on published research.

Invisible Towers will repeat its presentation tomorrow at 7 p.m. at a Neighborhood Residents Council meeting at Brandermill Woods, 14311 Brandermill Woods Trail.

Among the company's other projects in the region is a bell tower at New Highland Baptist Church on Ashcake Road in Hanover County. The design of the free-standing tower reflects the architecture of the church, and it even will play music once an electrical connection is complete.

At Huguenot Road Baptist Church, the church steeple hides cell-phone equipment installed by a different company. Other cell-phone towers in the region have been disguised as a flagpole outside a store and as a lookout tower for spotting forest fires in a rural region.

Richard P. Biby, the Virginia-based publisher of AGL (Above Ground Level) Magazine for the tower industry, estimated that 15 companies construct cell-phone towers in Virginia, based on the inaugural meeting of the Virginia Wireless Association last month.

"Everyone's probably been asked, forced or required to do a stealthish project" in which a tower is disguised, Biby said. "You don't go in initially proposing one of those sites. That's what you do when you realize there's a coverage need, and there's no other way to get it than a concealed site."

Disguised towers may cost two or three times more than bare steel poles. For the tree design that's proposed at Brandermill, Invisible Towers starts with a basic "monopole" and covers it with artificial bark to make it look like a tree trunk. Branches attached to the pole convert it into a "monopine" that stands about 40 feet taller than surrounding trees but blends in with existing greenery. Thompson and Faris showed examples of the bark and vinyl branches they have chosen.

After a monopine goes up, it needs extra maintenance to make sure the limbs stay attached and remain in good shape, which is one reason Biby considers the artificial trees "kind of silly."

He's more enthusiastic about church steeples. "I see that as a huge win-win," he said.

"The church is making $1,500 a month or so and it's getting service closer to where people actually are. Usually it can be done in such a way that people don't really know it's there. I don't really see a downside.

"The bell towers, clock towers, most of them look pretty good. If you're in the industry and know what you're looking at, it's, 'Oh, my goodness, there's a cell-phone tower.' If not, you might say, 'That's a strange place for a clock tower.'"

Bert Browning, pastor of the Huguenot Road church, lives in Brandermill and works beneath a steeple-concealed cell-phone tower. He said he would be OK with a cell-phone tower disguised as a tree.

"We've had no issues here with the one in our steeple," he said. When the church was built in the 1980s, he said, its 150-foot steeple was the tallest structure in the county. A cell phone company asked more than five years ago about putting equipment there.

"Huguenot Road was notorious for being a dead zone for cell phones. People lost their signal," Browning said.

"We decided, once we knew we were not offending or harming neighbors, it was providing a community service. There was going to be a cell phone tower put somehow, someway in this area. Better to be in our steeple than in some additional structure. Since we were in the right place, why not?"
Contact Katherine Calos at (804) 649-6433 or kcalos@timesdispatch.com.