New Cingular Wireless came to the July 16 board meeting to discuss any "reasonable conditions" that the Board wants to attach to the application. New Jersey Superior Court Judge Menelaos Toskos ruled that the Board did not give substantial evidence to warrant denying the application.

New Cingular Wireless first applied in December 2005. After several hearings and postponements, the Board denied the application in March 2007. The company appealed the decision. Toskos ruled in March.

Fourteen antennas will be mounted on the roof of a self-storage facility located at 410 River Road. Independence Harbor, a group of condominiums, is across the street and had a lawyer object to the project at the original application hearings.

Nicholas Sekas, an attorney for the Independence Harbor Condominium Association, was at the July 16 meeting. He asked the Board not to vote on the matter until the Aug. 6 board meeting so that he could bring experts to testify again since they were not involved in the court proceedings.

Michael Levine, the attorney for New Cingular Wireless, said that with the court decision, his client didn’t need to prove that it should be allowed the variance requests.

"It would be inappropriate for anyone to get a second bite of the apple," Levine said.

The Board’s attorney told Sekas that the Board was just going to discuss any "reasonable conditions," such as the color of the antennas, to put in place regarding the application.

Ultimately, the Board decided to carry the application until the Aug. 6 meeting so that it can see more photographs of what the antennas would look like. Sekas said he would notify the Board in advance if he plans to bring in experts to testify.

Levine had New Cingular Wireless’ engineer and land use planner review the plans.

The 14 antennas will be in four sections on the roof of the three-story building. The equipment for the antennas will be stored on the third floor of the building.

Colleen Connolly, the applicant’s engineer, said the building’s height varies at different points, ranging from 58 feet to 33 feet high. Board members questioned whether screens could be put up to block the view of the antennas from Independence Harbor.

Connolly said that because of the roof’s design it would be difficult to add the weight of the screens. She said that for the material to not be transparent it would be too dense and heavy when wind blows against it.

Connolly said the only option she could recommend is to paint the antennas to match the backdrop. One set of the antennas will go straight up approximately four feet and the other sets will be mounted horizontally to because of the difference in roof heights.

Peter Tolischus, the applicant’s land use planner, said that based on the building’s height, telephone polls and streetlights are actually more visually obtrusive than the new antennas will be. He suggested painting horizon lines across the roof and antennas to break it up to be more visually appealing.

The Board decided that it wanted to see blown-up photographs of what the suggested horizontal lines across the painting antennas would look like from across the street. Connolly will also give weight capacity calculations to the Board’s engineer for review.