Lansford Borough Council has approved a proposed cell tower on vacant mine land located in the southwest corner of the borough.

Council voted 6-0 Wednesday night, with Matthew Walsh absent, to approve the conditional use application filed by BET Lehigh Real Estate LLC of Horsham.Eventually, the tower should help improve spotty cellphone service in the borough.BET Lehigh is a holding company under the control of Bruce E. Toll, a powerful Philadelphia-area housing developer who is also chairman of Lehigh Anthracite.As the owner of thousands of acres of coal land in the Panther Valley, BET Lehigh gets a lot of requests from cellphone companies about building towers, consultant Brian Seidel of Seidel Planning and Consulting said. The proposal would provides an accessible site that would improve service in the town, he said."There's a lot of property that is available, but due to slope and conflicts with other uses, it's difficult to access that property," he said.The proposed tower would be located on land behind the Rite-Aid and Boyer's Markets in the borough, in the open space district. Under the borough's ordinances, cell towers are allowed in the district, but only if council approves them as a "conditional use." That was the purpose of Wednesday's hearing.BET Lehigh has also proposed three towers in Nesquehoning and others in Coaldale and Tamaqua.Seidel explained in testimony that the Lansford tower won't be built until a cellphone provider does a deal to put one of their antennas onto it."The mine owner has been approached by wireless carriers about several sites on their property," Seidel said.The tower would be 199 feet tall, including a 4-foot lightning rod. It would be set back approximately 340 feet from the nearest property line, putting it well out of range of any houses in the borough.The site would only be visited by cellphone personnel once every four to six weeks once it is built.Council members imposed several conditions on the project. They asked that a light be placed atop the tower to alert passing aircraft - even though the Federal Aviation Administration did not require it in their review of the plans.That recommendation came after Councilman John Turcmanovich raised the issue that medevac helicopters coming and going from St. Luke's Hospital-Miners Campus travel along the ridge where the tower would be located.They also required BET Lehigh to post financial security to ensure that the tower is taken down in the event it is no longer in use.