The black security fence is gone. New storm sewers and catch basins are in place. By the end of the year, Tylersville Road in front of the historic WLW-AM tower should be widened to five lanes for access to the $30-million Tower Park shopping and office complex.
One business — a car wash — is under construction between the iconic diamond-shaped radio tower and Tylersville Road. It could open by the end of the year, says Kurt M. Seiler, Mason city engineer.
"At this time that is the only site approved in the development," Seiler says.
Developer George Flynn said last year that restaurants, office buildings, a public storage business, daycare, bank and convenience store with gas pumps were planned for the 27-acre unit development. The Mason Planning Commission approved the self storage buildings in May 2021, but they have not been built.
Flynn, a partner in Tower Park Development LLC and a commercial real estate sales person for Lee & Associates, said in May 2021 he hoped the self storage business and daycare would open by the end of last year. He has not responded to requests for an update on the property.
The imposing iron fence along Tylersville Road, which had protected the gated site for the WLW-AM transmitter, tower and engineer's residence, was removed to allow for widening Tylersville Road, which connects Mason to I-75.
The widening should be substantially complete in early December, if all goes according to schedule, Seiler says.
The house, a garage and trees on the property were removed last year. WLW-AM will continue to use the historic Blaw-Knox tower, one of six in the U.S., and the transmitter building which housed the 1934 one-of-a-kind 500,000-watt transmitter. A fence will be built around the iHeartMedia transmitter building and adjacent guard tower in the center of the property. A smaller tower to the east of the transmitter and the big tower also will be fenced in.
Most of the trees were torn out to build the entrance road called Powel Crosley Boulevard in honor of WLW-AM's founder. The boulevard goes into a roundabout which will enable motorists to go east or west on Powel Crosley Drive to businesses along Tylersville Road. A plaque honoring Crosley also is planned in a small park west of the tower.
WLW-AM moved to 710 Tylersville Road from Harrison in 1928. Crosley engineers built the unprecedented 500,000-watt transmitter in the rectangular building still at the site after Crosley was granted experimental "superpower" by the federal government. President Franklin D. Roosevelt activated the 500,000-watt transmitter on May 2, 1934, which was used until 1943.
An Ohio Historical marker was erected at the transmitter site entrance in 2002 for the Blaw-Knox antenna which beamed the 500,000-watt "superpower" signal, earning WLW-AM the title of being "The Nation's Station." It noted that local residents "reported hearing (WLW) broadcasts on barbed-wire fences, milking machines, rainspouts, water faucets and radiators."
iHeartMedia — which operates WLW-AM, WEBN-FM and six other Cincinnati stations — sold the Mason tower property to Vertical Bridge Holdings of Boca Raton, Fla., the nation's largest private owner and manager of communication infrastructure. Vertical Bridge leases towers, rooftops, billboards, utility attachments and other assets to telecommunications carriers or other users of wireless technology.
