METHUEN — Residents cheered as the Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously last night to deny T-Mobile's request to build a 110-foot cell phone tower on Maplewood Avenue.
Dozens of residents crammed into City Hall to speak against T-Mobile's request for a variance to build the tower at 24 Maplewood Ave., on land owned by Lorraine and Albert Gervais of Lawrence.
"Such a tower would loom over our neighborhood," said Ellen Paine of 20 Maplewood Ave. Paine said the tower would be 65 feet from her property line.
If the tower were to fall, "it puts us well within it's fall zone," she said.
Paul Downing of Evergreen Avenue asked if anybody had seen the site after this week's rain.
"It's under water and if we pave over that with a compound, where is all that water going to go?" he asked. "It's going to go in people's basements."
Zoning board member Jesse Ramirez said the neighborhood is too densely populated for the tower.
"I would not want to set a precedent in other residential areas for antennas," he said.
Attorney Brian Grossman represented T-Mobile. He said builders would have used a pervious crushed stone surface at most of the site and created drainage.
The plan for the tower previously called for it to be a 100-foot monopole, but designers changed it to a flagpole-style, Grossman said.
"It allows for a slimmer profile," he said.
But it would also be 10 feet taller, he said.
"I don't care if they make it a flagpole or a 100-foot Tootsie Pop," said Central District City Councilor Philip Lahey Jr., who represents the area and opposed the plan. "There has to be another location. If there isn't, maybe we should all go to Verizon."
Grossman said one of the reasons the tower is needed is because the area is filled with houses and Interstate 93, and is "not being served."
More people are ditching their land lines and relying only on cell phones, and cell companies need to produce strong signals to provide coverage inside houses, Grossman said. He said this tower would have provided coverage for a one-mile radius.
Current and former T-Mobile customers at the meeting said they had fine coverage in the neighborhood.
"You realize that if I go to your Web site and I type in an address on Lowell Street, it says it has good coverage," said zoning board Vice Chairwoman Laura Walta. "Is that just a marketing ploy?"
"If you read the disclaimer on the Web site, it tells you it's not 100 percent accurate," Grossman said.
No residents spoke in favor of the tower. Walta said the board never received some of the information it requested from T-Mobile.
