EUGENE, Ore. — Expect to see some heroically scaled new architecture on the University of Oregon campus in the coming year.
A 159-foot-tall cellphone tower planned for the Hayward Field area will be the tallest structure on campus.
When completed, the gray monolith will overshadow the tallest building on campus, Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, by 51 feet, according to documents submitted to the city of Eugene planning department on behalf of the university and SBA Communications, a Florida-based company.
The added height of the tower will allow the telecommunications company to provide antennae to additional cellphone carriers.
The cell tower will be more than twice as tall as nearby ballfield lights — and 35 feet above Hayward Field’s massive light banks. The tower also will be taller than the soon-to-be demolished and rebuilt west grandstand by 99 feet.
University planners considered affixing the tower to the new west grandstand but rejected that idea because of aesthetic and visual impacts — and because of a possible perception by spectators in the stands that the tower might fall on them, according to the documents.
Though McArthur Court is on higher ground, the cell tower will rise above that once-proud sports structure that was long home to UO basketball.
But, “in consideration of the lack of bulk to the unipole, the 67-foot height difference is not significant,” the project’s planners wrote.
The structure is tall enough that its planners had to evaluate whether to notify the Federal Aviation Administration. (They concluded that they didn’t have to.) The planners also had to test whether the tower would obscure views of Skinner and Gillespie buttes to the north. (It didn’t, they concluded.)
The project planners said they’d dampen any glare by painting the galvanized steel tower a light gray. (The tower measures up to 60.5 inches in diameter.)
The new tower will replace an existing 120-foot-tall tower that will have to be moved by Aug. 1 to make way for a planned renovation of Hayward Field. The new site is 425 feet to the south of the existing cell tower, which is adjacent to Hayward’s west grandstand.
The UO is renovating the field to triple the seats — up to 30,000 — for the 2021 track and field World Championships. It’s the first time the championships are to be staged in the United States.
The university also plans to build a 1,440-square-foot equipment building for the cellphone companies that contract with SBA to use the tower.
The building and tower will sit within a 2,152-square-foot area that the university is now leasing to SBA Communications through 2039.
The university is paying up to $1 million for the new cell tower, with money given for that purpose by an unnamed donor to the UO Foundation.
If SBA meets the Aug. 1 deadline for vacating the current cell tower, the university will drop the amount of rent it charges by 50 percent for five years, the documents say.
