CITY OF CHESAPEAKE, VIRGINIA
Master Plan December 2013
Geographic Area 350.9 square miles
Duration 2005 – Present
The Challenge
The City of Chesapeake is a diverse city with both urban and rural characteristics along the Intracoastal Waterway in the Atlantic Ocean coastal region of Virginia. The City desires to maximize the use of the towers they own for their 800-megahertz radio system by getting competitive collocation lease rates from the industry on their towers.
Our Solution
CityScape developed a Wireless Telecommunications Facilities Master Plan for the City of Chesapeake. The master plan combines local land use planning strategies with industry-accepted radio frequency engineering standards to identify areas needing the growing demand for wireless service. The plan creates an illustrative planning tool to aid decision makers and staff in planning for areas in need of wireless infrastructure. This analysis helps establish a policy framework and design standards to guide decisions regarding the siting of telecommunications facilities. Effective planning minimizes the number of new telecommunications facilities, maximizes new state-of-the-art siting options and utilizes all existing infrastructure as a basis for future growth. Lastly, City owned land sites were identified in geographic locations where network coverage and/or capacity is weak or non-existent. The identified public property could be used for new wireless infrastructure thus expanding the City’s options for generating lease revenues from the industry.
Key Outcomes
- Provided assessment of existing wireless telecommunications infrastructure upon which antenna(s) are currently mounted.
- Mapped and analyzed existing telecommunication facility locations, approximated coverage from those sites, analyzed current network deployment patterns and identified geographic areas with less than desirable coverage.
- Provided reasonable projection of needed telecommunications facilities over the next ten years with recommendations for managing the development of the new infrastructure to minimize the total number of new telecommunication towers.
- Identification of 90 City-owned properties as potential sites for future telecommunications facilities along with design guidelines and financial projections for using these properties.
- On-going contract to manage City-owned towers and leases.
