Cingular Wireless thinks the area is close to perfect too, but for different reasons.

The wireless service provider has set its sights on the swim club's property because it's a near-ideal site for a wireless tower. According to project manager Jim Ennis, engineers from Cingular identified a three- to four-block gap in service where reception is poor or service is lost.

The center of the gap in service is actually a block north of Fairbrae, but the city has an ordinance against towers on sites being used for residential homes. Fairbrae is the next best option, because it's not so far south that the coverage area would overlap the existing area from the tower on top of Fremont High School.

Cingular spokeswoman Kelly Pepper said that in addition to wasting resources by overlapping coverage, the towers could interfere with one another if they're too close together.

Cingular's plan originally had a 63-foot tower on a corner of the property that would be disguised as an Italian cypress tree, but due to city setback requirements, it had to rework its plan.

For every foot a tower is tall, it must be two feet from the property line, so Cingular and the city worked to come up with a 52-foot tower that was just far enough from the property lines to comply with the law. Ennis said that because it lost 10 feet, the gap in service would barely be covered.

"Every foot that we go down diminishes the strength of the signal," Ennis said. "Going down 10 feet is like cutting our engineers off at the knee. If we had to go down even two more feet, the project wouldn't even be worth it."

On the other side, many local residents are concerned about the money involved in the project. Neighbor Dick Pretel has been lobbying for a city or school location for the tower, to allow the money paid in rent by Cingular to fund a necessary city service. Ennis said that rent on towers varies from $500 to $2,000 a month.

Fairbrae board member Sandy Spires was at the meeting and said the club is concerned about negative reactions to the tower by their members. While many were criticizing the club's board for agreeing to host the tower for monetary gain, Spires and her colleagues said that the opposite may be true. If their members don't like the tower, or if more towers are placed, membership--which supports the club's operations--would likely dwindle.

The issue was supposed to be decided by the Sunnyvale Planning Commission on Sept. 26, but principal planner Andrew Miner said that because the pole's size and location changed, the hearing was postponed to a later date and re-noticed.