Despite support from AT&T and the Fort Worth school district and a \u201cno impact\u201d determination by the Federal Aviation Administration, the Fort Worth Board of Adjustment<\/a> rejected a revised design for a stealth communications tower at Arlington Heights High School.<\/p>\n The new tower is intended to replace an existing tower on the campus<\/a> that has become partially blocked by a new school building built close by.<\/p>\n In the board\u2019s March 18<\/a> meeting, member Michael Johnston and acting Chair James Hook sided with Alamo Heights resident Cynnamon Hall, who expressed concerns about the tower\u2019s height and visibility from her neighborhood, as she did previously at the board\u2019s Jan. 21 meeting.<\/p>\n The board voted 8-2, with Johnston and Hook opposed, sufficient to prevent the motion to approve the height. Board of adjustment rules of procedure require nine affirmative votes to approve a variance.<\/p>\n The applicant has 10 days to appeal the board\u2019s decision to a state district court if they choose to do so.<\/p>\n At the Jan. 21 meeting, the board approved three special exceptions and one variance related to the tower\u2019s location, appearance and screening fence approach. But the board stopped short of approving the height.<\/p>\n Following the January meeting, the tower\u2019s owner, SBA 2012 TC Assets LLC \u2014 a subsidiary of SBA Communications \u2014 redesigned the structure to reduce its overall height from 130 feet to 120 feet.<\/p>\n Bebb Francis, a telecommunications lawyer who spoke on behalf of SBA 2012, told the board the redesign was meant to address the board\u2019s concerns. He said the 120-foot height\u00a0would limit growth space for future antennas in the concealed area of the tower.<\/p>\n Francis also reviewed the technical justification for replacing an existing 87-foot tower in the same location, and summarized the supportive positions of AT&T, Fort Worth ISD and the FAA.<\/p>\n AT&T and the Fort Worth ISD had submitted letters of support at the January meeting, and they updated those for the March 18 meeting.<\/p>\n Hall, the resident, told the board that her concerns were unabated by the redesigned tower.<\/p>\n \u201cI was hopeful that the continuance would cause a significant change,\u201d Johnston said during the board\u2019s deliberation. \u201cI acknowledge that there\u2019s 10 feet, but when you look at a requirement of 50 feet, and we have now 120 instead of 130 \u2014 to me, that\u2019s not significant.\u201d<\/p>\n Board member Jim Whitton recused himself from the case, as he did in January when he disclosed that the applicant was a client of his.<\/p>\n Fort Worth Board of Adjustment<\/p>\n Documenter name:<\/strong> Doug Wilhelm<\/p>\n Date<\/strong>: March 18, 2026<\/p>\n To read more about this meeting, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other board business<\/strong><\/p>\n The board approved special exceptions for a monument sign and a freeway sign with electronic display of fuel prices for a QuikTrip under construction at 1081 Oak Grove Road, near Interstate 20 and Interstate 35W.<\/p>\n QuikTrip\u2019s designation of the site as one of its \u201ctravel centers\u201d indicates this location will provide fuel to passenger cars and commercial trucks. It is expected to be in operation in the fourth quarter this year.<\/p>\n The board also approved variances to landscaping requirements for two new speculative industrial buildings to be constructed at 2401 Eagle Parkway by Trammell Crow Co. as Phase IV of their 35 Eagle development near Alliance Airport, which currently includes 10 other buildings.<\/p>\n The new buildings will be approximately 508,000 square feet and 106,000 square feet, respectively.<\/p>\n A full listing of the commercial and residential cases considered by the board are listed in the meeting agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n Doug Wilhelm is a member of the Fort Worth Report Documenters<\/a> crew. If you believe anything in this account is inaccurate, please email us at news@fortworthreport.org<\/a> with \u201cCorrection Request\u201d in the subject line.<\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/2026\/03\/21\/fort-worth-board-rejects-redesigned-communications-tower-at-arlington-heights-high-school\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org”>Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fortworthreport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&quality=80&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/?republication-pixel=true&post=454229&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/2026\/03\/21\/fort-worth-board-rejects-redesigned-communications-tower-at-arlington-heights-high-school\/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/fortworthreport.org\/p.js”><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Scott Nishimura, Fort Worth Report March 21, 2026 Despite support from AT&T and the Fort Worth school…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":672145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,14614,7371,14615,14948,14616,7372,3060,14026,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-672144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-america","tag-documenters","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-documenters","tag-fort-worth-isd","tag-fort-worth-report-documenters","tag-fortworth","tag-schools","tag-telecommunications","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116268820552415607","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}