Pacific Towers withdraws Arcata cell tower proposal after backlash

Pacific Towers has withdrawn its plan for a 180-foot cell tower in the Grotzman Creek watershed, cutting short a land-use fight that had drawn sharp opposition from Sunnybrae residents near Shirley Avenue.

Humboldt County’s Planning & Building Department received the application on Oct. 10 for a conditional use permit to build a telecommunications tower near 422 Shirley Blvd. County records described the project as a structure about 180 feet tall that could support up to three wireless carriers, and the county scheduled an informational community meeting to explain the permit review and public comment process.

The proposed site sat on a heavily wooded parcel along upper Grotzman Creek, on the western edge of county-controlled land that protrudes into Arcata city limits. That location mattered. The parcel was zoned Unclassified, while the surrounding homes were zoned Residential Low Density, a mismatch that helped fuel concerns about whether a large telecom tower belonged in a forested watershed neighborhood so close to residences.

Opposition had already hardened by December, when nearly 100 residents packed a Sunnybrae neighborhood meeting to object to the project. Earlier discussion of the proposal referred to it as an 186-foot tower for T-Mobile service, and residents repeatedly described it as a “megatower,” a label that captured the scale of the structure relative to the surrounding homes and trees. Friends of Grotzman Creek Watershed and nearby residents made the visual impact and watershed setting central to their objections.

The withdrawal gives opponents a clear short-term victory and removes the tower from the county’s immediate permit pipeline. It also shows how quickly a technically routine telecommunications project can become politically fraught when it lands in a sensitive location, especially one tucked beside neighborhoods already attentive to land use, tree canopy and creek protection.

The project is not necessarily gone for good. Pacific Towers could return with a revised proposal, but any new version would likely face the same questions that defined this fight from the start: tower height, watershed impacts, zoning fit and the view from nearby homes in Sunnybrae and along Shirley Avenue. For now, the neighborhood that mobilized against the tower has forced a retreat, and Arcata’s land-use politics have once again reached deep into the woods above Grotzman Creek.