{"id":25380,"date":"2025-06-03T03:43:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T07:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=25380"},"modified":"2025-06-03T03:43:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T07:43:56","slug":"brick-now-owns-the-cell-phone-tower-outside-town-hall-following-1998-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2025\/06\/brick-now-owns-the-cell-phone-tower-outside-town-hall-following-1998-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Now Owns The Cell Phone Tower Outside Town Hall, Following 1998 Agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A co-located cellular communications tower at the municipal complex in Brick Township. (Photo: Shorebeat)<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s been standing since 1998, and has processed millions of calls from the \u201cZack Morris phone\u201d era to the AI-powered iPhones and Galaxy models of today \u2013 and it now belongs to Brick Township.<\/p>\n

When an agreement was signed between Brick and a fledgling company known as Omnipoint Communications, Nokia had just overtaken Motorola with the best-selling mobile device \u2013 the 5110<\/a>, a state-of-the-art phone that came with an 84-by-84 pixel monochrome screen and could be purchased in different color casing. That agreement held that Omnipoint \u2013 which after a heap of mergers became known as today\u2019s T-Mobile \u2013 would build a co-located cellular communications tower at town hall. Being co-located meant that while the tower was owned by one company, any provider could place their own antenna arrays on the structure and pay a lease fee to the owner. Brick received $1,200 per month for the use of its land, a 4 percent increase in rent per year, plus 40 percent of whatever profits the tower brought in from other providers subletting space.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A co-located cellular communications tower at the municipal complex in Brick Township. (Photo: Shorebeat)<\/p><\/div>\n

When the lease of the tower came to an end in 2023, township officials had a decision to make. They could take ownership, lease the entire tower out to a new provider, or demolish it so a new tower could be constructed. They chose to take ownership of the structure, and the legal transfer was completed last month by way of a signed agreement with Omnipoint, which remains in existence as a corporate entity. Under the finalization of the agreement, T-Mobile \u201csold\u201d the tower to Brick for $1, and they will continue to simply lease space. The tower is managed by communications specialists within the Brick Township Police Department.<\/p>\n

T-Mobile\u2019s array will continue to provide service, now joined by two other firms, said Joanne Bergin, the township\u2019s business administrator. Verizon and Dish Home Network Service both lease space on the tower. T-Mobile\u2019s array dates back to the original 1998 agreement, while Verizon antennas first appeared in 2008 and Dish in 2022.<\/p>\n

The township maintains its own emergency communications tower adjacent to the commercial tower.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been standing since 1998, and has processed millions of calls from the \u201cZack Morris phone\u201d era to the AI-powered iPhones and Galaxy models of today \u2013 and it now belongs to Brick Township. When an agreement was signed between Brick and a fledgling company known as Omnipoint Communications, Nokia had just overtaken Motorola with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,3502,4484,4832],"class_list":["post-25380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-cell-tower","tag-featured","tag-t-mobile"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/brick_cell_tower_1266-scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-6Bm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25382,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25380\/revisions\/25382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}