Marys Peak Replacement Tower near Corvallis, Oregon

Location: Marys Peak, near Corvallis, Benton County, Oregon
Client/Owner: Silke Communications; landowner City of Corvallis
Partners: Benton County Planning Commission and Building Department; land surveyor; geotechnical engineer; tower manufacturer (tower and foundation design)
Year: 2023–2025
Size/scale: New 100-foot three-sided self-supporting steel tower on a mat foundation, replacing a wood antenna pole and an older guyed tower at an existing hilltop site
JBE services: Site survey coordination, existing and proposed site plans, conditional use permit application, geotechnical coordination, building permit package and plan review drawings
Sector: Towers & Telecom

Wood antenna pole with dishes beside two small equipment shelters on the Marys Peak ridgetop

The challenge

Near the top of Marys Peak, outside Corvallis, a small communications site had been carrying its antennas and dishes on a tall wood pole. The pole was decaying at the base and needed to be replaced. An older guyed tower on the same site was also due to come down.

The plan was a new 100-foot self-supporting steel tower in their place. The site sits on forest-zoned land in Benton County, so the tower needed conditional use approval before a building permit could even be applied for. The existing shelters, a backup generator and its fuel tank all had to be accounted for in the new layout.

Project photos

What we did

We started with information gathering. We visited the site and documented the existing pole, shelters and equipment, coordinated a boundary and topographic survey, and worked through the details with the client: where the generator and fuel tank would go, whether the yard would be fenced, and which existing buildings would stay.

From that we prepared existing and proposed site plans and assembled the conditional use permit application, with civil drawings, for Benton County. The application went to a public hearing, and the Planning Commission approved it in September 2024. We then saw the approval’s conditions through to completion, including recorded covenants covering forest practices and future tower removal.

For the building permit, we coordinated the geotechnical investigation and the manufacturer’s tower and foundation design, and prepared the plan review set: site plans, foundation and steel notes, and special inspection and structural observation requirements. The permit package went to Benton County in March 2025.

The result

The site gets a purpose-built steel tower in place of a failing wood pole, approved through a full public land use process and documented for construction.