The Aurora City Council is set to vote on allowing Scientel Solutions to build a new headquarters on Eola Road, just south of Diehl Road.
Scientel, a wireless telecommunications and systems integration company, wants to build a 12,000-square-foot office space, a 3,000-square-foot warehouse building and a 195-foot-tall communications tower on a 2.66-acre site.
The building would be across the street from CyrusOne, a Dallas-based data processing and storage company that houses data for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, as well as a number of foreign trading exchanges. Scientel has more than 125 clients across the country with a total of eight offices in the U.S. and Canada.
Scientel chose the location, in part, to be as close as possible to the mercantile exchange data storage site.
But CyrusOne, which is in the midst of an expansion in the city, is concerned that the Scientel tower will interfere with a 350-foot tower it intends to build on its site. City officials approved that tower about a year ago.
CyrusOne has suggested Scientel use the CyrusOne tower — called co-locating in the telecommunications world.
“We don’t think Scientel has made a good case why they need their own tower and can’t do co-location,” a CyrusOne spokesman told the city council recently.
The planning and development committee of the council has recommended the Scientel plan, but aldermen at the committee of the whole held it for two weeks. Then, it was passed onto the full council for a vote.
A spokesman for Scientel said it needs its own tower because its network operations are going to be at the headquarters, and they are tied to the tower. The company has a number of clients, including public safety entities, and needs access to its tower 24 hours, seven days a week, the spokesman said.
He likened it to the difference between leasing and owning a facility. One of the reasons Scientel is moving its headquarters from Lombard to Aurora is so it can own rather than lease a building.
“From a purely business operations standpoint, having our own tower, our own building, is a next step for us,” the spokesman said, adding that Scientel doesn’t use the entire spectrum of wireless communications and would not interfere with CyrusOne.
The Federal Communications Commission regulates the frequencies and decides if they will interfere. But the City of Aurora has a telecommunications consultant, and he told aldermen his studies indicate the Scientel tower would not interfere with CyrusOne.
One of the issues some aldermen raised is that when Scientel first came to Aurora, it built a wooden pole on its property to use as a tower without getting prior approval from the city.
Ald. Richard Mervine, 8th, pointed out that CyrusOne is a “major player” in the telecommunications world with “a pretty substantial data infrastructure.” He said it made strategic decisions based on the city’s new telecommunications ordinance, and that if “we’re willing to throw that out,” it could affect future high tech companies coming to Aurora.
“I’m not comfortable with that,” Mervine said. “I don’t have the trust because of the way they came in.”
The Scientel spokesman said the pole was for video surveillance equipment because there was illegal dumping at the site.
“There was no fiber running through the pole,” he said. “We removed the pole right away and just sent people there.”
The city would grant variances to Scientel for its plan, said Stephane Phifer, planning and zoning director. Scientel hasagreed to move the location of its tower based on what the FCC decides about interference, and to deadlines by which infrastructure and construction must be finished, she said.
Phifer said when Aurora passed its new telecommunications ordinance, it expected to grant variances because of different developments’ circumstances.
“We said we would take it on a case-by-case basis,” she said.
Mervine said the ordinance was intended to bring stability to the corner of Diehl and Eola Roads, and to prevent a bunch of companies and towers popping up.
“I know the world is watching,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon us not to make a mistake as to how we treat existing business.”
