Thank you for the discussion. It’s important to keep our focus on Niantic’s guidelines and ensure that decisions are based on facts, not assumptions or personal interests within the game.
From experience, discussions like this can sometimes drift off-topic, especially when participants haven’t fully read or understood previous posts. To help maintain a constructive conversation, I’ve enabled slow mode. You’ll be able to comment every 2 hours, which I hope will encourage thoughtful and meaningful contributions.
Hi! Welcome to the Wayforum, it’s exciting to see new and passionate members pick up on topics like this.
I think this water tower does encourage exploration. As a symbol to the city and a nod for visitors about an important part of the community that may be seen from outside of the area.
You also shared a frequently overlooked guide about “restricted areas.” I do refer to that, at times, for locations sensitive to public health & safety, like a water works campus or oil refinery. At these places, being caught trespassing could get you on a watch list, not just escorted out by local security. Unfortunately, the particular text you found isn’t available to general reviewers and it’s clear it does not meet removal criteria.
Were I submitting in this local area, I would ponder the tower but skip it - it’s just not worth it to me to encourage such AR gameplay. If it was in review, I’d probably reject it for that reason. Once live, however, I’d shrug and move on because, as mentioned before, it’s an individual player’s responsibility to abide by laws and “because it’s there in game” is not an excuse to trespass.
I also think this may be a perfect opportunity to follow the course of advice that’s been offered multiple times to reach out to the manufacturing operations facility management to let them decide how to handle this rather.