New owners of the former Jackie O’s building on the North Service Road near Warrenton are seeking clearance to establish a test site for antenna broadcasting equipment.
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New owners of the former Jackie O’s building on the North Service Road near Warrenton are seeking clearance to establish a test site for antenna broadcasting equipment.
Representatives of the firm Top Floor Investment Partners are petitioning the Warren County government to change the zoning on the former resale store from agriculture to commercial. That would allow tenant company Hoverfly Technologies Inc. to begin testing there for products sold to the U.S. Department of Defense and other government or industrial agencies, said Planning and Zoning Administrator Vickie Vohsen.
The site would also be used to receive, configure and ship the broadcast equipment, as well as for technical support services, Vohsen said. The site contains about 19 acres, part of which is undeveloped.
Top Floor representative Rob Topping presented the business’s rezoning request during the Oct. 15 meeting of Warren County’s planning and zoning board. Topping said products that pass through the facility will end up being shipped around the world.
“Our business makes a thing called ‘variable height antenna.’ ... We’ve recently got a bunch of big orders, and we need to expand our ability to do production testing,” Topping said. He explained that the 'antennas' to be tested are actually small flying vehicles tethered to a system on the ground, which can lift communication equipment up to 200 feet in the air.
“What you would normally get in terms of range on a handheld walkie talkie or tactical radio, is less than 2 or 3 kilometers. But if you put a variable height antenna up above the tree line ... you can extend that to, say, 20 kilometers,” Topping explained.
He said the equipment would be manufactured in St. Louis County before being brought to Warren County for testing, configuration and shipment. The Warren County facility would have room for about 27 employees, but Topping said the company is considering running multiple shifts to meet demand for technical support at all hours.
Members of the county’s planning and zoning board asked about the technical specifications for the antennas, things like their height, flashing lights for aircraft, and whether they would interfere with other radio signals.
Topping replied that the equipment meets all FAA requirements, and wouldn’t cause problems with surrounding radio broadcasting.
“They’re relatively low-power. They’re tactical radios for squad maneuver, platoon-size deployments. They’re not over-the-horizon ... big transmitters,” Topping said. “They don’t interfere with TV, CV radios, cellphones or anything else.”
After receiving no objections from the public, members of the planning and zoning board voted 5-0 to recommend approval of the testing site’s rezoning request. The proposal will go to the Warren County Commission for a final decision on Nov. 19.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly described the variable height antennas as vehicle-mounted units with motorized, telescoping poles, rather than aerial units attached to a ground-based system. We apologize for this error.
