Towering Infernal?

A Philly ad man fights the Comast cell phone towers.

Steve Grasse has a problem with erections.

Not his own, mind you. The erections troubling Grasse belong to Comcast Metrophone, a former client of Grasse's Gyro Advertising.

Grasse, founder and president of Gyro, has launched a one-man crusade to oppose Comcast Metrophone's plans to construct two cellular phone transmission towers in Fairmount Park. The Fairmount Park Commission (FPC) approved the proposal earlier this month.

In exchange for permission to place a 65-foot tower a few hundred yards north of the Horticultural Center, and an 85-foot tower within sight of Greenwood Mansion, Comcast will invest an estimated $600,000 into capital improvements for the park. The company plans to repave parking lots, tear down and replace old storage sheds and construct a new garage for trolleys.

Grasse says that's "not nearly enough," but adds that the real issue is a business' encroachment on ground that should be sacred.

"The park, quite frankly, is one of the reasons I stay in this city," says Grasse, who lives in the Art Museum area and jogs in the park regularly. "I just want to raise awareness, and let people know the city is selling off the park... I mean, what's next, McDonald's?"

(To be precise, the city isn't selling the land. FPC's approval simply allows Comcast to negotiate a lease for the two sites with the city's Department of Public Property.)

Last week, Grasse began faxing and handing out a one-page flyer urging city residents to call Comcast Metrophone and "Voice your outrage... and tell them to stay out of our park!" In the flyer, Grasse asks why the mobile phone service provider has been granted permission to use taxpayer-owned land, and suggests that health hazards could result. (The illustration is in typically brazen Gyro style: A cartoon man with marble- and golf ball-sized lumps covering his face and head appears under the line, "Is it safe? Or will our children look like this?")

Comcast Metrophone is not amused.

Grasse says Melissa Nichols, Comcast's vice president of corporate communications, called last week and asked him to stop distributing the flyers. "And of course I refused," Grasse says.

Nichols, however, says she didn't ask him to stop. "I was just interested in making sure he understood the story behind our proposal and what we plan to do there," she says.

The story is this: Comcast responded earlier this year to the city's request for proposals for use of public land for cell phone towers. The FPC opened the matter for discussion at its April and May meetings, and voted on June 2. No one from the public spoke out against the towers at any of these meetings, according to FPC marketing manager Tom Doyle. (Announcements were published in the classified sections of the Inquirer and Daily News, Doyle says.)

And the $600,000 in improvements to Fairmount Park is "far and away more than anything we've ever offered in cell site lease negotiations," Nichols says. "But when we undertook this process, we understood we were dealing with a precious resource."

But why in Fairmount Park, of all places? Nichols explains that Comcast has had "chronic problems" maintaining strong signals for cell phone-using commuters on the Schuylkill Expressway, especially between Manayunk and the Girard Avenue exit.

The thought of suburbanites yapping on car phones only heightens Grasse's outrage.

"People who live in the city have to have ugly towers so people from the suburbs can talk on their car phones," he complains. "It's unbelievable."

The Art Commission will weigh in on the towers' appearance. Director Bill Burke says the commission will consider the matter - and possibly vote on it - at its July meeting if Comcast and its architect deliver detailed plans to the commission's office this week, as expected. Burke, who does not vote, expects the nine commissioners will have a "certain comfort level" with the towers due to FPC's recent approval, and probably will be more concerned with the buildings Comcast has promised to construct.

The Historical Commission's nod also will be required. Comcast had not applied for consideration as of Tuesday, a staff member said, but the commission did not respond to a request for further comment.

Apparently no agency will gauge whether the towers will pose any sort of health threat, but research indicates they won't. Dr. Ken Foster, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania who has consulted for Comcast, says cell phone transmission towers are "basically miniature radio stations... [and] if radio waves were dangerous, there'd be zones of devastation around those broadcasting towers near Roxborough and Manayunk."

"I don't know of any scientists who are arguing that these towers are dangerous," Foster adds. Their output, he says, is usually about 200 watts - equal to two standard light bulbs - and generally 500 to 1,000 times below minimum acceptable levels.

Information downloaded from a Medical College of Wisconsin Web site, Electromagnetic Fields and Human Health, supports Foster's statements: "The consensus of the scientific community, both in the U.S. and internationally, is that the power from these base station antennas is far too low to produce health hazards as long as people are kept from direct access to the antennas."

Grasse, however, says he won't be deterred.

"I haven't really decided what the second step will be," he says. "But there will be a second step."