WOBURN - Citing conflicts with the city's zoning bylaws, the Planning Board refused to endorse a special permit request last night for a Nextel wireless facility in a residential zone on Lexington Street.

According to Josh Delmen, a consultant from Finley Ventures representing the petitioners, Nextel Communications was seeking to place six wireless antennas on a Boston Edison utility pole located near the Sons of Italy on Lexington Street.

The proposal, which called for erecting three of the antennas at a height of 70-feet and the remaining devices at 65-feet, would have also included the construction of an equipment shed at the bottom of the pole.

Insisting that the special permit request was consistent with Woburn's zoning bylaws, as it sought to build the facility off of an existing structure — a Boston Edison utility pole — Delmen further argued that the site would minimize any aesthetic impacts through the manner in which the antennas were mounted.

"Reading the bylaw, it's clear that Woburn encourages the use of existing structures. These would be flush mounted to the [utility] pole to minimize any aesthetic impacts," the consultant said.

"You would see a panel antenna coming off the pole itself. There would be a total of six poles going across with one pole dedicated to each of the antennas," the petitioners' representative added, when asked to describe the proposal in detail.

Disputing Delmen's contention, Planning Board Director Edmund Tarallo recommended against the special permit request, citing his belief that the use was prohibited in a residential zone.

Specifically, the Planning Board Director argued that the wireless facility could in fact be considered a free standing structure, not a build-out at an existing building. And that use, Tarallo insisted, was clearly prohibited by the city's zoning regulations.

"I guess the one question I do have is when I reviewed this, I was unclear about the location and whether this is a pre-existing structure," the Planning Director said.

"As a free standing structure, it's not allowed in the R-1 zone. If it was building mounted, then the petitioner would be correct," added Tarallo.

Although Delmen referred to the cell-phone provider as identifying a "degraded level" of coverage in the area, he stopped short of referring to those issues as constituting a "significant gap."

According to the 1996 federal Telecommunications Act, local zoning regulations can't prohibit such wireless facilities from being constructed if a significant gap in coverage exists in the surrounding area.

However, those federal provisions also call for providers to prove that no alternative sites exist that would avoid the need to violate zoning regulations.

And according to Tarallo, with the proposed facility's close proximity to the Four Corner's area and an adjacent non-residential property, Nextel could easily pursue other ways to address its purported coverage issues.

"There are certainly a number of non-residential structures, as well as a non-residential zone, that's close to this district," the Planning Board Director argued. "You're talking about the Sons of Italy area. And if you look back, the Four Corners isn't that far away."

The matter is scheduled for a public hearing before the City Council at its Tuesday, June 6 meeting.