St. Charles Tower, Inc was incorporated in April of 2000 and has multiple towers located in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona. SCT also has a portfolio of over 50 billboards in Missouri and Illinois all available for collocation. We are a build to suit tower and co-location provider.SCT, LLC, the deployment services arm of St. Charles Tower was formed in July of 2008, SCT, LLC is ready and capable of services from site acquisition, architecture and engineering, project and construction management as well as build to suit. These services are available in-house by our staff, which has over 75 years combined experience in the wireless communications industry.In the news....
COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN
Board approves Campus Lutheran Church steeple with hidden communications tower
By Fareeha Amir
July 10, 2012 | 9:25 p.m. CDT
COLUMBIA — The Columbia Board of Adjustment on Tuesday evening unanimously approved a request for a conditional use permit for the construction of a 41-foot steeple and cross on top of Campus Lutheran Church.
The steeple will contain a concealed communications tower and antenna, which will be used to provide coverage to cellular devices. The addition to the church, located at 304 S. College Ave., will have a 6-foot-tall cross on top of a 35-foot steeple.
The church's attorney, Dale Linneman, and St. Charles Tower Inc. applied for the permit.
St. Charles Tower Inc. has contracted with Shive-Hattery Inc. to provide engineering and surveying services for the tower.
St. Charles Tower originally considered several other Columbia buildings for the hidden tower in before settling on the church. A few of these were at Stephens College; Paquin Tower was also a candidate.
What else happened:
Linneman said the church does not have a steeple and that adding one would increase its cosmetic appeal. He said the communications tower would be useful for now and the future.
Board member Rex Campbell expressed concern about the tower's height and whether it would damage any neighboring residential areas if it were to fall. He was assured by Bob Bardone, spokesman for St. Charles Tower Inc., that the neighboring areas are at a great enough distance to keep them safe if the tower were to fall.
Pat Zenner, development service manager for the city, said this tower is the first cellular communication tower in Columbia that will be hidden inside a structure. There are a number of hidden cellular communications towers in Columbia, but none are in an existing structure such as this one, Zenner said.
What's next: St. Charles Tower Inc. will have to submit a building plan to the city's Community Development Department and will then have to wait for its approval to start construction, Zenner said.
PRESS Release, RCR Wireless, Oct. 2010
September 24, 2010
St. Charles Tower is pleased to announce that it has inked the first deal in the United States with Light Squared Wireless, within the Las Vegas market.
The owners of St. Charles Tower, Chris Puricelli and Robert Bell, are very pleased to see a new wireless carrier enter the industry. St. Charles Tower is a local St. Louis firm that started in 2000 providing real estate, construction and engineering services in the midwest and southwest sections of the United States. In addition, SCT owns communication towers and switching stations across the country.
Light Squared is deploying in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver currently.
More Cities are expected for development in 2011 including Los Angeles, New York and St. Louis.
visitor count
St. Charles Tower plans to build cell tower to look like an elm tree
By Andrew Denney
Friday, December 21, 2012
A cellular tower disguised to look like an elm tree is planned for property near the University of Missouri's football stadium that might later be the site of a small apartment complex.
The Columbia Planning and Zoning Commission gave unanimous approval last night to a rezoning request, a development plan and a final plat that will allow for the construction of as many as 24 apartments contained within two buildings and a cell tower disguised as a tree on Providence Road southwest of the University of Missouri campus.
Phebe LaMar, an attorney representing Greg and Misti Post, the applicants for the rezoning request, said the tower will help to improve cellular phone service near Memorial Stadium, which is particularly poor during MU football game days.
"This is a very real need right now," LaMar said.
Pat Zenner, the city's development manager, said the tower would be the first of its kind in Columbia.
Greg Yocom, an engineer with the St. Louis-based St. Charles Tower, said the trunk of the 100-foot "stealth" cell tower will have a steel core and will be wrapped with a synthetic material. It would be able to support cell signals for five carriers.
The rezoning request pertains to a 2.5-acre tract of land on the west side of Providence between it and an outer road also known as Old Route K and changes the applicant's statement of intent for the land. The land had been rezoned from an agricultural to a planned office district in 2005, but no new construction occurred at the site after the rezoning. There is little development on the property now other than an existing duplex.
Zenner said the applicants have not submitted plans to construct buildings on the site. To do so, they would have to submit a site plan subject to a review by city planners and P&Z.
Commissioners Ray Puri and Stephen Reichlin were absent from last night's meeting.
This article was published on page A1 of the Friday, December 21, 2012 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune. CLICK HERE to view the article from the Columbia Daily Tribune web page.
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Press Release
St. Louis based St. Charles Tower’s RF Engineering Department Revs up Performance and Traffic for a Rural Wireless Company in Arizona
Mohave Wireless and St. Charles form a Symbiotic Relationship
Chesterfield, MO, December 15th, 2011: St. Charles Tower (SCT) has been building towers for over 10 years in seven states with its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. Co-partners Robert Bell and Chris Puricelli we not satisfied with network building in the St. Louis MTA so they set their sails westward. SCT now has regional offices in Las Vegas and Dallas. In 2010, the St. Louis, Missouri Corporation brought an old acquaintance onto its staff to perform its RF Engineering responsibilities and to act as a Liaison with its wireless carrier customers. Greg Yocom worked as a Senior RF Design and Performance Engineer for a major wireless carrier side by side with the current staff at SCT. In addition to providing engineering services for SCT, Greg has developed a RF Engineering Service option for SCT’s customers. SCT now works with the carriers to improve their networks on an a la carte basis. RF Design and Performance Engineering Services are customized for SCT’s customers using site visits, RF propagation software, etc. SCT then develops a plan to improve the customer’s existing network while planning for future coverage and/or capacity expansion.
The first customer to utilize SCT’s RF Engineering Service was Mohave Wireless. This rural wireless provider has a very large and challenging area that covers all of Mohave County, Arizona. Mohave County, lies between Las Vegas and Phoenix, spanning 113,000 square miles in NW Arizona, with rugged desert and high mountain terrain. The climate in Mohave County ranges from extreme hot temperatures and high winds to heavy snow and bitter cold. This large area is covered by 29 cell sites, many in remote locations.
Optimizing the existing network was the 1st step in the project. SCT visited most of Mohave Wireless’ sites while working closely with their employees. SCT was instrumental in providing the RF design services needed to maximize coverage and performance for Mohave Wireless, including the recommendation for very high performance antennas that will hold up to the extreme elements of Mohave County. SCT went further and provided all of the parameters for the new network design, including beam-widths, heights, down-tilts, and azimuths, for all cell sites in the network. According to Charlie Tegarden, Network Manager for Mohave Wireless, “the help we received from SCT was invaluable because a small company like Mohave Wireless does not have this kind of resources internally”. SCT also led the site selection, engineering, and construction efforts for the addition of a brand new cell site to expand the Mohave Wireless coverage area even further.
Mohave Wireless is handling a very demanding market with only a few very dedicated employees. SCT is trying to fill in where needed for this very dynamic company by being a one-stop shop for everything Mohave Wireless needs to maintain and grow. Mohave Wireless has seen significant improvements in network coverage and performance from their partnership with SCT. In fact, network wide traffic has increased and average of 3.7% during the 6 month period following network optimization and dropped calls have been reduced by 35%. SCT is currently working with Mohave Wireless to identify potential new sites which would expand their coverage area while improving the quality of service that Mohave Wireless provides its customers.
SCT is currently working with 2 new clients including Valnet in St. Louis to improve their network’s performance that will provide the necessary capital to expand their networks by having St. Charles Tower build more towers for them. This extra service that SCT now offers is truly a win-win situation for St. Charles Tower and its present and future partnerships.
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ST. LOUIS BUSINESS JOURNAL – April 25th, 2012
Many ways to camouflage a cell tower in Granite City
By Jim Merkel stltoday.com | Posted: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 11:30 am
JIM MERKEL / ST. LOUIS BUSINESS JOURNAL: The Rev. Karla Frost, pastor of St. John United Church of Christ in Granite City, stands near to a cell phone tower on her church's property with a cross added. Flags, branches and crosses are among the ways used to make cell towers more acceptable.
People standing in the parking lot of Granite City's St. John United Church of Christ may get a good reminder of their faith just by looking up. In the back of the lot is a 120-foot-tall white tube with a cross attached — a cell tower.
To the Rev. Karla Frost, the church's pastor, the monthly lease payments for the tower mean a tidy addition to the church's treasury, plus a nice statement to the community. "It helps financially, and it helps the community to have good service," Frost said. "It has a nice cross on so it aesthetically pleasing”.
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St. Charles Tower hits new heights with LightSquared
St. Louis Business Journal - by Rebecca Boyle
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2010, 2:00pm CDT
Wireless services firm St. Charles Tower is the first in the country to sign a deal with LightSquared, a next generation wireless provider that aims to compete with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.
The initial contract includes tower leases worth about $2 million that will boost St. Charles Tower’s revenue nearly 60 percent. The company’s owners anticipate the contract value will mushroom to $20 million in three years — a nearly tenfold increase in revenue.
Earlier this month, LightSquared said it secured $850 million in debt financing but didn’t disclose the source. The venture is a key project for billionaire Philip Falcone, who manages the hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Harbinger’s two largest funds have sunk about 40 percent, or $3 billion, of their assets into LightSquared, people familiar with the funds told Reuters, but the project may still need to raise another $5 billion, according to industry experts.
Reston, Va.-based LightSquared will offer its 4G — often referred to as “next generation” — open wireless broadband network in St. Louis sometime next year. St. Charles Tower’s initial contract is for services in Las Vegas and Phoenix, where the firm already owns several cellular towers.
St. Charles Tower co-owners Chris Puricelli and Robert Bell said the deal with LightSquared will provide wireless Internet access for laptops and smart phones at speeds equivalent to DSL. Nokia Siemens will build the network, which is scheduled to roll out early next year. St. Charles Tower will host the triangular antennae on existing structures. LightSquared aims to cover 92 percent of Americans by 2015.
“You’ll have Internet in homes, in cars, and when you go to a hotel, you’re not going to have to pay $14.99 to use the Internet,” Puricelli said.
It’s also a major boost for St. Charles Tower, which has been building cell towers throughout the Midwest and West for 10 years. Puricelli and Bell built their first couple of towers with their own funds before getting $2 million in capital from Bremen Bank. The tower business is “really a hybrid of real estate and equipment,” Puricelli said, making it tricky to explain when seeking financing.
Puricelli, who previously worked for Bechtel and AT&T Wireless, estimates the company’s current value at $25 million to $28 million. He said St. Charles Tower’s annual revenue is about $3.5 million; about $2 million is from tower construction and sales and about $1.5 million comes from the firm’s services and site acquisition arm, STC Services. The firm builds between 10 and 20 new towers each year. At any given time, St. Charles Tower owns and maintains between 40 and 60 “towers,” which include steel rods, church steeples and even fake trees.
The firm already works with next generation wireless provider Clearwire, which entered the St. Louis market this spring. Clearwire, which is majority-owned by Sprint Nextel Corp., announced Oct. 18 that it plans to expand its 4G WiMAX mobile service to New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco by the end of this year. As of now, it’s the fastest-available wireless Internet in the country, but it may not retain that title for long — Verizon’s forthcoming LTE (long-term evolution) network could provide greater speed, and LightSquared’s own LTE is backed by a satellite, a world first.
Tom Surface, corporate communications director for LightSquared, said the firm has already signed up a few partners.
In a research report dated Oct. 20, Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin indicated that LightSquared may be working toward a deal with Dish Network, which could help it raise capital and attract customers.
From real estate to towers
The new contract with LightSquared is a fitting evolution for St. Charles Tower, which grew out of expertise in billboards and rural cell towers.
Puricelli joined forces in 2000 with Robert Bell, who had experience acquiring real estate and erecting billboards. They incorporated St. Charles Tower in 2000.
Puricelli said he approached LightSquared with several possible tower locations, including Las Vegas and Phoenix, two of LightSquared’s four initial launch cities.
The first 4G antennae for LightSquared will be co-located with existing St. Charles Tower antennae broadcasting in different parts of the light spectrum. As LightSquared enters more cities, St. Charles Tower will erect new structures.
LightSquared’s project is unique because of its satellite component. The company’s spectrum falls in the satellite band, so the FCC required the firm to include an integrated satellite service. Customers will be able to choose satellite-based services or land-based services, with no price difference.
Boeing announced Oct. 19 that it was shipping LightSquared’s first communications satellite to Kazakhstan. The SkyTerra 1 has a 72-foot-diameter reflector, which will allow mobile performance on par with land-based transmitters. It will work with four gateway ground stations to create nationwide coverage in the United States.
“It’s like having a cell tower in the sky — that’s how powerful these satellites are,” Surface said.
Read more: St. Charles Tower hits new heights with LightSquared | St. Louis Business Journal
Robert Bell (left) and Chris Puricelli Owners, St. Charles Tower
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