Fred Hopengarten

Fred is an amazing person. He has deep technical and legal knowledge that is useful when he negotiates land use and zoning, contracts and agreements on your behalf. For me he did what I thought was an impossible situation and thus I highly recommend his services to anyone in need of legal services ...around his area of expertise - Land Use and Zoning, Contracts and agreements.

If you need an attorney to deal with a municipal amateur radio tower problem, Fred is the ONLY person you should consider hiring. He helped me to keep up 2 towers that I put up without permission. I ended up with permits for both towers about 20 years after they were erected. He is a great guy and ve...ry easy to work with. His rates are also very reasonable.

Fred has a strategy that gets you a tower permit. He knows zoning and radio law and is perceived as an expert by zoning authorities. Even though my station was in Illinois, he had connections in our state ready to mobilize on our behalf. I appreciated his thoroughness and dedication to detail. The pe...rmit application was prepared as if we had to defend against any type of argument against granting us a permit. I would highly recommend his advice before you get a permit or buy property requiring legal work.

After many years of planning, I decided that it was time to put up my dream antennas and get back on the air. My wife and I had purchased a small acreage in Iowa without any CCRs and in a county that, according to the local ordinances, had no stringent restrictions on amateur radio antennas. When I i...nquired at the county offices about procedures for obtaining a building permit, however, I was told that I would have to abide by the rules for commercial cell towers (apply for a conditional use permit, subject to the approval of the county Board of Supervisors with a public hearing inviting neighbors within a very large circle of radius containing more than 200 residences). I stopped talking to the county and started talking to Fred. I had already read his excellent book cover-to-cover. Over the period of a couple of months Fred guided me toward the development of a bullet-proof application and gave me explicit instructions on how to file it. I had my permit within one week after the building permit application had been filed.

Attorney Hopengarten is among the most well-known and competent communications-law attorneys in the USA today. Although he specializes in amateur radio antenna litigation as it relates to land use regulations in local communities, he also has represented major firms in their efforts to secure permit...ting for their cell tower installations throughout America. I have engaged Atty Hopengarten several times in the past 15 years and his advice, counsel and services have always produced highly satisfactory results for me. He does his homework, prepares his arguments well and almost ALWAYS comes away with some kind of rational settlement and result for his clients. I know other friends who have used his services as well and, to his credit, Atty Hopengarten has represented their causes well also. It is not surprising, therefore, that he has a national reputation for getting positive results. If you have a land use problem with your community as regards some kind of antenna, be it amateur, private or commercial, Atty Hopengarten is "the man you always want to call" He is somewhat pricey - but well worth whatever you will be paying him because he is among the very best - if not the absolute best - in his chosen field. I recommend him without any reservations whatsoever!