The problem, said Tim Lusk, was that there were holes on the east side of Pilot Butte.

Lusk is a construction project manager with VoiceStream Wireless, a Personal Communications Services (PCS) phone provider. More than three years ago, VoiceStream set out to try to blanket the Bend area, giving solid coverage all across town, and eliminate those holes in reception on the east side of the butte.

Its solution, Lusk said, was to place three 30-foot poles on the sides of Pilot Butte and triangulate. After several months of construction, VoiceStream finally got the whole operation up and running a couple of weeks ago, and held an open house at the top of Pilot Butte on Friday to answer the public’s questions.

”We used the butte as the tower,” Lusk said. ”This site replaces about three or four cell sites we’d have to have in town.”

Though VoiceStream built the towers and made various other improvements to Pilot Butte State Park, including bringing a water main to the top and refurbishing a room that sits under the site’s monument that contains some of VoiceStream’s equipment and some power equipment, the towers belong to the park, Lusk said.

”That worked out really good for us,” he said. ”As a citizen of Bend, I think it’s great.” Lusk came here from Hong Kong seven years ago and has been building cell towers based on what he called ”stealth construction” the idea that the ideal tower not only provides coverage, but also doesn’t disrupt the landscape. He stood on top of Pilot Butte on Friday and pointed to two towers standing in parking lots south of the cinder cone, dwarfing the surrounding buildings.

”I’ve used rooftops and wood poles,” he said. ”Only one steel tower. I’m just trying to stay as stealth as I can.”

Though Lusk said it is hard to gauge exactly how far coverage now reaches, he did say that it is much better than before, and that the whole city of Bend should have ”in-building services” in other words, people can get wireless reception even indoors.

”(The signal) propagates until something stops it,” he said. ”It goes about five to eight miles from the butte.”

Towers at Powell Butte, Grizzley Mountain, and Gray Butte provide pretty good coverage for most of Central Oregon, he said.

Lusk did not want to say what the project cost in the end because other PCS providers may be bidding to use the towers as well.

But Curtis Smith, assistant area manager with the High Desert Unit of Oregon State Parks, said in July that he expected the final price tag to come to $500,000. For now, VoiceStream is footing the bill. Any other PCS provider who bought space on the towers would help pay for it as well.

Lusk said that his ”stealth” method is necessary in a community like Bend, and that he prefers the towers that way himself.

”If you want people to be happy with your stuff, it’s got to be sightly,” he said. ”It’s got to look good.”