By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — A big red balloon floated over 92 Greens Farm Road on Wednesday morning — visible to drivers on Interstate 95 near the Hillspoint Road bridge, visible to Metro-North train riders and visible to Greens Farms Road neighbors protesting construction of a cell tower, which would rise to the height where the balloon bobbed 124 feet above ground.

The proposed cell tower would be unsightly, dangerous and much too tall, according to several observers in opposition.

Also on the scene were two Representative Town Meeting members and Town Attorney Ira Bloom.

Neighborhood opponents cite health, safety and appearance concerns

“We are devastated,” said Vanessa Mikuszewski, a neighbor of the proposed site, who is expecting her first child and who purchased the house next door to 92 Greens Farms Road less than a year ago with her husband, Scott. “I have safety concerns for the baby,” she said “There are lots of young children in the houses near here. It’s a community of children.”

The Mikuszewskis bought a home in Westport even though real estate prices were already high because they wanted to take advantage of the good schools and the coastal living that Westport provides, she said. And they planned to renovate heir new home “to compensate for the highway [I-95]” that runs behind their home. 

“We love Westport and wanted to be here permanently,” she said. Now she’s not so sure. 

A few months after the Mikuszewskis moved in they discovered that a 124-foot-tall cell tower has been proposed by Tarpon Towers/AT&T for their next-door neighbor’s property. “We’re losing value to our property before we even get started,” she said.

Carrying a “Stop Ugly Tower” sign along with Mikuszewski on Wednesday was Don Bergmann, who lives on Sherwood Drive, but came to object to a tower on the Greens Farms residential property.

“The idea that you only care about your own neighborhood, that’s not Westport,” he said. “We care about the whole town.” He doesn’t think the new cell tower is needed, and  that it “will be aesthetically ugly.”

Andrea Wolfe, a nearby neighbor on Hillspoint Road, stopped by early in the morning to show support for those protesting the tower. 

“Yes, we don’t have good cell service,” she said, acknowledging that some neighborhood residents have complained about spotty cell phone service in the area.

But, Wolfe added, installing a tall cell tower on a residential property in her neighborhood is not the answer. “No one wants to look at it,” she said of the tower, and it’s not needed. “You can go on WiFi on our cell phones.”

Peter Gold and Karen Kramer, two of the RTM representatives from District 5, where the Greens Farms property is located, also stopped by to show their concern. 

Both agreed that their main objections to the project are that tower would be too tall and that it does not belong in a residential area.

“I don’t understand why it has to be so high to have an effect,” Kramer said. “I just don’t understand.”

Developers criticized for short notice, test delays

The handful of protestors waited for several hours for someone from Tarpon Towers/ATT, the companies proposing the Westport tower site, to launch the balloon test to determine how visible the tower would be from different locations. 

They had been notified late Tuesday night that it would happen at 7 a.m. Wednesday, but by 10 a.m. it seemed likely that it had been cancelled, which occurred at least two times before, according to Wolfe and Bergmann.

The short notice from the cell tower developers of Wednesday’s test, and the hours-long delay of the launch, triggered frustration among town officials as well as the neighbors.

Town Attorney Ira Bloom, in an emailed message at midday Wednesday, wrote: “First, I share everyone’s unhappiness with the lack of notice of this balloon test,” notification of which was made only the night before.

And, after contacting one of the lawyers involved in the project about why the balloon had not been set aloft at the scheduled time of 7 a.m. Wednesday, Bloom said he was told the vendor hired to launch the test had been delayed until about 10:30 a.m. The balloon was expected to fly over the site for the initially planned four-hour period starting from that time, he added.

Vendor sends big, red balloon 124 feet above site

Finally, Rick Landino from All Points Technology, the vendor hired to launch the balloon, arrived at the site and began preparing to set it aloft. After taking measurements, he slowly let out the balloon’s tail as it climbed higher and higher above the wooded area between the house and the highway.

“The reason I’m floating the balloon is so I can assess the visibility,” Landino said.

Those protesting the cell tower site walked along the street toward the highway, taking photos of the balloon and trying to determine what a cell tower would look like from various perspectives.

The owners of the home at 92 Greens Farms Road, listed in the Westport assessor’s records as Mahesh Pradiv and Sharuna Moola, were not present for the balloon test.