A Carbondale-based internet provider will go before city zoners this week for approval to build an 80-foot-tall telecommunications tower at a former firehouse.

Icon Technologies is seeking a variance from the Carbondale Zoning Hearing Board to erect a telecommunications tower at 1 Veterans Drive that will both provide internet access for customers and serve as a Lackawanna County 911 repeater, according to a public notice published Wednesday in The Times-Tribune. The tower would be located at Carbondale’s long-closed West Side Hose Company building, which is in a light industrial zoning district.

The zoning hearing board will consider the request at 7 p.m Wednesday in the council chambers at Carbondale City Hall, 1 N. Main St.

The relocated 911 repeater stems from a vandalism incident earlier this year at the former St. Joseph’s Hospital on Lincoln Avenue, Mayor Michele Bannon said. The repeater had been on the roof of the former hospital when a vandal broke into the building and shut off the electricity, which cut power to the repeater, she said.

“When that happened, they weren’t able to connect with the 911 service properly, so they thought in order to avoid that from ever happening again, they moved all their facilities over to the West Side (firehouse),” Bannon said. “They have more control over it, and they can make sure that it’s operating properly and that there’s no other problems with them connecting up with 911.”

Icon Technologies owns the former firehouse where the tower would be located, she said. Operating as Mine Fire Holdings LLC, the firm purchased the building from the city for $51,000 more than a decade ago, according to a property transaction recorded April 30, 2013.

Carbondale has not staffed the firehouse in more than 30 years, Bannon said.

Icon Technologies hosts the 911 repeater for Lackawanna County, said company President Alex Kelly. His firm was already planning to apply with the city to install a tower for their own business use as a fixed wireless internet service provider serving Lackawanna and Wayne counties, he said. When Kelly found out the county needed a new location, he offered to put it on the roof of the firehouse while his company applied to build the telecommunications tower, he said.

The vandalism incident in April that cut power to the tower had impacted the ability of field units to radio back, he said. It served as a fill-in unit, which meant, for example, it would provide radio communications for a firefighter in the basement of a building, he said. The disruption in April posed more of a potential problem than an operational problem, he said.

Lackawanna County currently has three antennas on the roof of the firehouse — one that connects to a county tower on Salem Mountain, one to provide connectivity to Magisterial District Judge Sean P. McGraw’s office at 38 N. Main St. and a third that provides two-way radio communications for police, fire and emergency medical services, he said.

The roof-mounted antennas are about 18 feet high now but would benefit from being higher up on the 80-foot tower, Kelly said.

For his business, the tower would allow Icon Technologies to offer faster internet speeds in the Carbondale region, going from up to 200 megabits per second to gigabit speeds, Kelly said, calling the proposed tower very typical compared to the rest of their network. His company has seven towers in the region and is building two more in Wayne County.

The proposed tower at the firehouse would be next to a baseball field with lights that are similar in height, Kelly said. There are also trees on the west side of the property to help block it from view, he said.

“I can’t imagine it’s going to be much of a visual disturbance for anybody,” he said, calling the tower far less noticeable than the field’s lighting. “We’re trying to be good neighbors here and do this in the least intrusive way possible.”

If approved, the tower would be completed by the end of the third quarter this year, Kelly said.

Originally Published: June 30, 2025 at 5:05 PM EDT