The three 689-foot towers at the old Lyndhurst, N.J., facility of WOR(AM) will come down shortly after 10 a.m. next Wednesday, Sept. 20.
The triangular towers are Ideco/Dresser structures erected between 1965 and 1967 and have been a staple along the New Jersey Turnpike since.
Each has five guy wires. Tom Ray, VP and corporate DOE for Buckley Broadcasting/WOR, tells RW the tower crew will cut the three center wires on one leg of each tower. “The towers should come crashing down in a somewhat compact pile, almost straight down, within 60 seconds.”
Northeast Towers of Farmington, Conn., is doing the demolition work. WOR expects a number of news crews on hand (and RW’s Scott Fybush will be there), but the station is “keeping everyone but Northeast Towers out of the fall zone, which we have defined as 750 feet from a tower base.”
More on WOR’s Tower History
Background on the story above from Tom Ray:
“The original 50 kW WOR site was in Carteret, N.J., built in the mid-1930s. It employed a three-tower in-line array (center tower was simply a wire suspended between the two end towers). The signal was a figure 8, hitting both N.Y and Philly.
“By the mid 1950s, with the growth of NYC, it became apparent that something needed to be done about the increasingly noisy WOR signal in NYC (sound familiar?). The Lyndhurst site is a former dump. The dump was closed, and the State of New Jersey was looking to redevelop this area.
“WOR purchased 45 acres of swamp/dump and built a new site, only 6.25 miles from midtown Manhattan. A three-tower array was used again, but this time in a dogleg arrangement, which bent the top of the figure 8 pattern over towards the city and Long Island, while maintaining the lobe towards Philadelphia. This array also had detuning skirts and networks, plus traps to keep out signals from other nearby AM stations.
“Because of the technology at the time, the effect on the efficiency of the antenna because of these traps and detunes would be unknown. The towers were therefore overly tall and the antenna built overly efficient as compensation for the percieved efficiency losses. Turns out the losses were minimal, and the site was grandfathered as overly efficient.
“Fast forward to 2006. The grandiose plans of the state for this area never materialized. In their quest to clean up the area, the state made a deal with a company called EnCap. Its business is to locate old dumps, enter into long-term leases from the local authorities, then clean and develop the properties. This isn’t just any dump. It is something like 4,000 acres and covers parts of three towns. The entire dump will be converted into three full-size golf courses, a train station, a couple of hotels, a ‘grand’ hotel, a couple of office buildings and a conference center. Plus over 2,000 housing units.
“WOR has been relocated to an area of swamp which is pristine and has always been a swamp.”
