Matt Bates

A company continues to explore options for a controversial cell tower on Chattanooga’s Southside, but it has rejected the idea of putting it on a former landfill that now holds a new FedEx facility.

Wireless Properties LLC officials Wednesday asked the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals to defer action on a tower proposal to allow them more time to evaluate other properties.

Plans for the 180-foot cell phone tower in the Main Street Arts District were delayed for another month.

One possible alternative location had included a four-acre tract behind the new FedEx Ground operations in Alton Park.

But officials with Wireless Properties said that property, owned by Long Street LLC, is not in the needed location.

“Wireless Properties will continue to work with the areas where wireless facilities are needed to provide crucial wireless infrastructure necessary for homeland security, public safety and general communications of the public,” G. Larry Wells, president of Wireless Properties, said in an e-mail.

Matt Bates, vice president of Wireless Properties, said it has taken a while to look at all of the properties.

“Now we are down to about five locations,” he said of the alternative sites, some of which have environmental and zoning hindrances. “We just wanted a little more time to take an honest look at them.”

The company’s pending proposal to put the cell tower at 1706 Rossville Ave. was met with opposition by people who live and work in the area. The cell tower would sit at the corner of Washington Street and Rossville Avenue just south of Main Street. Company officials went before the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals in March seeking approval for the cell tower.

When plans for the tower were proposed, residents and developers expressed their concerns that the tower would be detrimental to the area’s revitalization. Initially, approval was delayed 30 days so the tower permit could be reviewed by the Historic Zoning Commission.

If the tower is approved by the zoning commission, it would go back to the Board of Zoning Appeals for approval.