When Hope Mills commissioners met on Thursday, they voted to sell a town-owned cell tower to Symphony Wireless for over $480,000. The vote passed unanimously.
Mayor Pro Tem Kenjuana McCray was at home recovering from surgery but participated and voted from her phone. Commissioner Jerry Legge was not present and did not vote.
Drew Holland, the town’s finance director, presented the board with several options for the tower, which is located just behind Town Hall. The cell tower is currently leased to Crown Castle under a contract that runs until April 2032, paying the town $1,825.05 per month. Crown Castle offered to extend their current lease until 2062 at a reduced rate of nearly half, dropping to $949.02 a month. Holland told the board Crown Castle currently has only one user on the tower but plans to add more.
Symphony Wireless, a New York-based telecommunications company that acquires and manages cell sites, offered to purchase the tower from the town and presented two options: one, a price of $481,813.20 to be paid upon closing, or two, a price of $394,210.80 to be paid at closing and $24,638.18 paid in four annual installments, totaling $492,763.50. The board chose Symphony Wireless’s first option, receiving the full amount at closing.
Next, board members voted unanimously to deposit the funds from the sale of the tower into the capital improvement fund, which is used to cover infrastructure improvements, renovations and other similar needs. After the vote, the commissioners discussed adding an antenna to the tower while they still owned it to aid in Hope Mills’ public safety communications. The board was informed by the town’s finance director, Drew Holland, that he had already spoken with Symphony Wireless about the antenna. Symphony Wireless indicated that they had no issue with the antenna and would not charge the town for its use.
Prior to the board meeting, commissioners took a two-hour tour of the Police and Fire Departments in the Public Safety Building. The subject of the Public Safety Building has been the primary focus of recent board meetings due to the lack of space and the town’s growing police department. The $17 million building is being financed over the next 30 years and was constructed in 2023.
Mayor Jessie Bellflowers said that the tour went quite well and board members learned a great deal. Commissioner Elyse Craver said it was the first time she had been through the building.
“I was amazed that it looks like they really don’t have all that much space to do everything Chief Dollinger plans to do,” Craver said.
Bellflowers also said the town’s needs no longer fit the size of the building. Ten years ago the building would have been suitable for the size of the town and police department, Bellflowers told CityView, but due to annexation over the last decade, the station no longer meets the town’s current needs. As an example, Bellflowers noted that the female locker room was originally built to accommodate just a few female police officers. Today, Hope Mills employs 18 female police officers, according to Bellflowers.
“We needed to have the visual to see it,” he said of the tour. “We really needed to see it for ourselves.”
