Despite a petition to stop the project, Crown Castle will go before the Davis Planning Commission on Wednesday night with a revised proposal for cellular antennas it hopes to build around the city.

The controversial project emerged in 2009, hitting many roadblocks along the way.

Crown Castle’s latest revisions — submitted only hours before the originally scheduled meeting in October — offer alternative locations and modified antenna designs from which the commission can choose. The changes were maade to address concerns about aesthetics of the 25 antenna sites that the company wants to build.

The two demonstration poles near 812 Burr St. in West Davis and near 4608 Redbud Drive in South Davis have been updated to show what the new antenna options look like.

Antenna design and location will be one of the main topics to be reviewed at Wednesday’s hearing. Under the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, city regulators are prohibited from considering any real or perceived health effects of cell towers and may only consider matters of aesthetics.

Mike Webb, principal planner for the city of Davis, pointed out that “Crown Castle has a license from the California Public Utilities Commission that says they’re a telephone company and says they have the right to locate their facilities where they want. This is a different entity than what we’ve dealt with before.”

Also up for discussion at Wednesday’s hearing is zoning ordinance 2155, which prohibits cell towers from being built within 500 feet of a residential district.

If the project is approved, the 500-foot setback would have to be amended in order to accommodate Crown Castle’s antenna system that requires its 25 antenna sites to be in close proximity to each other.

Some Davis residents worry that ending the setback would open the door to other companies wanting to set up antenna systems in the city, based on another detail of the 1996 telecommunications act, which states that local jurisdictions cannot discriminate between like-functioning telecommunications providers.

One concerned resident is Susan Monheit, who is part of a group that has collected close to 600 signatures petitioning the city to preserve the 500-foot setback.

“The city is poised to dismantle its own zoning ordinance for the benefit of Crown Castle,” Monheit said. “And when we don’t have a setback, we won’t have the legal standing to deny other competing projects.”

Webb said that although ending the zoning ordinance could open the door to other similar applicants, the city would still need to approve individual applications.

“That’s something the commission is going to have to take into account, the long-term implications,” Webb said.

Crown Castle’s original proposal asked for the city’s approval of 25 antennas on existing street light poles, joint utility poles or new stand-alone poles. The system is designed to improve cell phone coverage for the carrier MetroPCS.

Crown Castle agreed in November 2010 to go through the city’s application procedures, putting a lawsuit on hold, to reach an agreement on the cell tower installations.

Crown Castle inherited the legal battle when it took over NewPath Networks, which had completed installation of fewer than 10 towers before the city manager put a stop to the project.

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