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4.0 BACKGROUND 41 RPC Properties, Inc. owns the property at 2233 Hamline Avenue, which has a Comprehensive Land Use Plan designation of Office (0) and a zoning classification of Limited Business (B-1) District. This request for coN�iTioNaL usE approval has been prompted by the applicant's desire to install Wi-Max equipment which will extend above the roof of the existing office building. 42 The requirement that towers and antennas on private property be approved as coN�iTioNaL usES was incorporated into the zoning ordinances in 1996. A previous antenna structure appears to have been permitted and installed in 1989 but was removed sometime between Ramsey County's aerial photography flights of 1996 and 2000. A set of three rather substantial antennas was approved by coN�iTioNaL usE PExMiT (CUP) in 1997 and, while a mechanical permit was issued for their installation, they were removed prior to the aerial photography flight of 2000 (if they were, in fact, installed). Another antenna installation was approved under a second CUP in 2001; this installation remains in place, and is represented as "existing" equipment and antennas on Clearwire's current plans (included with this staff report as Attachment C) and can be seen standing beside the building's penthouse in the applicant's photo simulation. 43 An additional set of antennas appears, for the first and last time, as "existing antennas" in the plans submitted for the 2001 proposaL While these antennas are too small to be seen in any aerial photographs, Planning Division staff believes that they were permitted to replace the equipment approved under the 1997 CUP — after that equipment was removed — since it was a substitute for (rather than an addition to) what was approved in 1997. 5.0 STAFF COMMENTS 5.1 Although Clearwire's current proposal seeks to reuse some of the mounting hardware that remains after the former equipment was removed and, conceivably, could be permitted under the existing, unused CUP, Planning Division staff would suggest amending the 1997 CUP to better regulate present and future proposals — but for the fact that current understanding of the pertinent zoning ordinance is that a CUP "amendment" is actually a"replacement" instead of a modification. For this reason, Planning Division staff will recommend processing the current application in such a way that will terminate the existing CUP and replace it with a new, more appropriate and forward-looking coN�iTioNaL usE approval resolution. 5.2 Section 1013.10A4 (Commercial Antennas on Non-City Sites) of the City Code allows commercial telecommunication antennas (with or without towers) on privately-owned properties as coN�iTioNaL usES in Business and Industrial zoning districts. The parts of the current proposal requiring approval as a coN�iTioNaL usE are a 42-inch panel antenna and a narrow GPS antenna; these will be mounted on the office building's penthouse wall and extend above the roof line. The proposed panel antenna needs to be a certain amount taller than the existing transmitting equipment in order to prevent signal interference. 53 Section 1013.10Al2 (Exceptions) exempts from the coN�iTioNaL usE requirement antennas which are mounted on a building but do not extend above the roof line, allowing such antennas as permitted uses. The remaining equipment in the current proposal PF10-007 RCA_032210 (3).doc Page 2 of 6