Customers at Target, Home Depot, In-n-Out Burgers, Grocery Outlet, and Applebee’s among others in East Manteca will know what time it is in the coming months without having to check their watch or cell phone.

All they will have to do is step outside and look up into the sky.

AT&T wants to erect a 75-foot clock tower in the retail center on the southwest corner of Yosemite and Commerce avenues in order to camouflage cell antennas.

The triangle shaped tower will completely hide the antennas. The tower structure will match the architectural styles of the center’s other buildings that happen to include a T-Mobile store.

The equipment for the cell service at the base of the tower will be screened with a 6-foot masonry wall painted to match the rest of the retail center. It also will be landscaped. The tower is taking part of the approved site for a third building. That structure, not being built at this time, will be smaller than originally approved. The center wraps around the site where McDonald’s is building the replacement for their fast food restaurant located just down the street on Yosemite next to Manteca Bowl.

Manteca will go from no clock towers currently to two by the time 2013 ends. The municipal transit station now being built at Moffat Boulevard and South Main Street will have a four-sided clock tower just under 40 feet.

At the City Council’s directive, the transit station will also have a large flag pole for a garrison style American flag that is 23 feet by 80 feet. The council made that decision after it was determined the type of radio antennas the city needed to attach to a cell tower placed earlier this year on Wetmore Street prevented that tower from being a monopole that would have accommodated a flag as well.

The AT&T tower is the second disguised tower in Manteca along the Highway 99 corridor. A monopole camouflaged as a giant palm tree stands behind the Christian Worship Center on Button Avenue.

The tower at Yosemite and Commerce is the first to advance through city hall for approval after the council last year told staff they wanted no more ugly cell phone towers in Manteca.

The Manteca Planning Commission will review the clock tower project when they meet Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St.