Two years after Bow built a cell tower on town-owned land to close a coverage gap in the central part of the community, officials are considering a new tower on the south side.
This time, the site isn’t town property; it’s owned by resident Dennis Ordway. Mariner Tower, a company based in Maine, has proposed erecting a 190-foot-tall self-supporting lattice tower on his 57-acre wooded land on South Bow Road.
The planning board has yet to approve the proposal.
Brian Grossman, an attorney for the company, said at a planning board meeting in June that the site was chosen because of findings in the town’s 2024 study, identifying dead zones. The new tower, he said, would provide coverage to South Bow Road, Woodhill Road, Hooksett Road, Quimby Road and the Nottingcook Preserve area.
He also said the site’s tree cover and the tower’s finish would minimize its visibility.
“It’s shielded by a lot of woods,” Grossman said. “The vegetation really screens it fairly well from a number of locations around town. The galvanized finish, as we talked about, is non-reflective to try and blend with the environment to the extent it is feasible.”
The visual impact of new cell infrastructure is not a new debate in Bow. When the town built its own tower on Branch Londonderry Turnpike East in 2024, residents raised concerns about its visual impact, and the same concerns have been raised with the Mariner Tower proposed for South Bow Road.
Dana Ordway, brother of the landowner, has argued in emails and in person to the planning board that the tower would be “redundant.”
He said Hooksett plans to replace its emergency radio tower with a new structure that would also carry cell equipment on 98 South Bow Road, and it could address the same areas that the Mariner project proposes to address.
“Building a new 190-foot tower while another approved tower sits paused nearby creates unnecessary visual and environmental impact,” Ordway said at a July planning board meeting.
However, plans have fallen through for the tower at 98 South Bow Road.
Karri Makinen, a planning board member and the town’s community development director, said it’s natural for a cell tower proposal to draw criticism.
“Most people don’t want a cell tower in their backyard,” she said. “I think specifically the discussion about this one is: Is it in the ideal location, or is there a better site that would have been more suited?”
