NORWAY — Planning Board members will meet Thursday to hear more information on an application by Global Tower Partners of Falmouth to construct a communications tower on Frost Hill.

Planning Board Chairman Dennis Gray said GTP has filed a preapplication to construct a 190-foot tower on a 10.75 acre parcel at 209 Frost Hill Road owned by Roberta Wilner. On Thursday, Dec. 13, the company will be back before the Planning Board with more information and perhaps the full application, he said.

“If we determine it’s completed, we’ll set a public hearing to hear comments,” Gray said.

The company is advertising for public comments about any historic properties that may be adversely impacted by construction of the tower. Gray said he was not aware of any such sites in that immediate area.

If approved, this will be the first GTP communications towers on Frost Hill, according to company officials. Additionally, the company has a 150-foot tower at Hammond Heights in Paris; a 190-foot tower off Route 26 in Oxford and a 180-foot tower in Waterford.

Waterford Code Enforcement Officer Bill Haynes said Monday that GTP’s Rice Hill project in Waterford, which is said to service 80 to 85 percent of the town, leases out space to companies such as U.S. Cellular, which hooked up in March. Later on, space was rented to AT&T.

“This summer, they (AT&T) put their antennas up, but there’s been no activation,” Haynes said.

Other towers are in Woodstock, Newry, Fryeburg, Gilead, Bethel and other Oxford County sites. In total, the national company has 172 communications towers throughout Maine alone.

Norway does not have a specific cellular tower ordinance, but the applicant must meet the site plan review requirements, Gray said.

Otisfield, one of the few towns with no communications towers and only one application, does have a communication tower ordinance.

The approval of that U.S. Cellular application has been held up for months because The Friends of Scribner Hill and other entities filed four appeals,  three with the Appeals Board and one with the Oxford County Superior Court in South Paris.

The complaints to the Appeals Board said, among other matters, that planners did not follow town ordinances and the comprehensive plan in making their decision. The first two appeals were denied.

The appeal to the court, which took over the case in the summer 11 months after the Planning Board approved the application, asked that the court send the case back to planners for a full hearing. The hearing was conducted in November.

The town is now awaiting a decision.

“Nothing new from the court as yet,” Otisfield Code Enforcement Officer Richard St. John said Monday.

ldixon@sunjournal.com