Verizon Park Circle
Kimley-Horn worked with Verizon Wireless and Crown Castle to provide creative design solutions for a new cell tower and help increase bandwidth for the growing North Charleston, South Carolina region.
This project began when Verizon identified a coverage deficiency in North Charleston. To solve this shortfall, they needed to add a new cell site at a location within the deficient coverage zone. After researching the coverage area and City zoning requirements, Verizon found they needed to co-locate on a Crown Castle-owned tower in a congested portion of North Charleston.
It was discovered that four existing carriers already were leasing space in the compound and only a narrow strip of empty ground space was available for Verizon occupancy—too small to accommodate Verizon’s typical ground-mounted configuration for outdoor equipment. The Kimley-Horn team devised a creative solution: installing Verizon’s equipment above the other carrier’s equipment. This solution would require designing a three-column, cantilevered platform supported by a concrete pile cap foundation with micropiles, allowing Verizon to install its necessary radio equipment and a back-up generator in the event of a power outage.
The project conformed with City requirements, including high seismic and wind loadings and the need for no redundancy. Kimley-Horn was able to meet the timeline agreed upon by Crown Castle and Verizon Wireless and, in that time, took what seemed like an insurmountable challenge and reframed it into a viable and potentially replicable design for future spatially constrained areas.