Duke tower returns to Durham Board of Adjustment after jurisdiction error

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Southpoint AccessWes Platt

Duke Energy wants to build a skyscraper-height cell tower near Scott King Road in South Durham.

The proposed structure would include a 260-foot lattice tower topped by a 10-foot lightning rod, making it roughly as tall as a 25-story building. It would stand on Duke’s Parkwood Tie electrical substation property, about 1,300 feet from Scott King Road and west of Lyons Farm Elementary School.

It wouldn’t primarily serve as a commercial cell tower. Duke says it needs the structure to modernize a communications network used during daily operations, power outages, and other emergencies. But the tower also would be designed to carry equipment for four personal wireless providers.

First, Duke has to persuade the Durham Board of Adjustment to make three exceptions to the county’s development rules and approve a minor special-use permit.

The property is in a Residential Rural zoning district, where freestanding communications towers ordinarily are limited to 120 feet and required to use a monopole design. Duke wants a tower 140 feet above that limit, a three-legged lattice structure, and permission to use computer-generated images instead of conducting a balloon test to demonstrate the tower’s visibility.

The Board of Adjustment will consider the four applications beginning at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22.

It’ll be the second time the board has voted on the project. The first decisions didn’t stand because Durham officials had processed the applications under the wrong jurisdiction.