A communications facility may be reactivated next to a historic Lake Oswego home. Residents are pushing back.

Published 4:30 pm Wednesday, July 30, 2025

The owners of a historic home in Lake Oswego have asked the Clackamas County Circuit Court to issue an order preventing the reactivation of a telecommunications tower at Lakeridge High School.

The site was originally a light pole for the school’s baseball field and the tower was built in 1997 to colocate telecommunications infrastructure. It was decommissioned in 2021 but Verizon applied with the city to reactivate it this year. The city initially issued a stop work order, saying the tower was not previously a telecommunications facility. It lifted the order after determining that the tower had in fact been constructed as a telecommunications facility in 1997 and so the reactivation of the antennas and other equipment didn’t constitute a change in use.

“Wireless equipment was not attached to an existing light standard, rather the tower was constructed to house the equipment and lights were attached,” an attorney for defendant Crown Castle wrote in an email to the city of Lake Oswego.

Petitioners Ben and Annelie Adams live at the Carter House on Stafford Road. The house is considered a historic property in Lake Oswego; therefore the family has to receive approval before it can make substantive changes to its structure that could limit the visual impacts from the tower. Further, they are concerned about health risks associated with the cell tower being so close to their home.

“The resumption of construction poses immediate and irreparable harm to our historic property, its viewshed, and property value. Once construction and installation proceed, the visual and environmental impacts will be irreversible,” Annelie wrote in a court filing.

The homeowners argued that the tower never received proper permitting approval as a telecommunications facility in 1997 and that continues to be the case to this day. They also pointed to the city requiring a conditional use permit for a telecommunications facility at Waluga Junior High School.

“The Lakeridge High School installations are materially identical: involving light pole swaps for monopoles, co-location of telecommunications equipment, within a residential neighborhood, adjacent to school athletic fields. The City never required a CUP at Lakeridge-not in 1997, 2003. or during the 2025 reactivation-despite no legally meaningful distinction between the two projects. This represents arbitrary, inconsistent application of the City’s land use code and a denial of due process protections to nearby residents,” the plaintiffs’ court filing reads.

Along with the injunction, the petitioners want the city to pay their attorney fees and for the court to “grant further equitable relief as justice requires.”

The court denied their request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in the case.