During The Woodlands Township Board of Directors' cell tower discussion on September 17, 2026, one speaker said that earlier that day they had been in their own street for an hour because they couldn't get cell service for a very important call. When asked which of the proposed parks was near them, the answer was Shadowbend.
That night the board voted 6-0 to put the first new cell towers on Township parkland. The towers will stand 120 feet tall and are built to look like pine trees. The plan explains a lot about why service in parts of The Woodlands has been unreliable for years: the deed restrictions that keep the community wooded and uncluttered also kept the towers out.
The gap is bigger than most people assume
The Township's agenda for the September hearing gives the scale of the problem. A propagation analysis that combined AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile found unreliable signal zones across the Township's footprint. They add up to about 40% of Township geography with "inadequate or marginal coverage." The same document says the gaps affect emergency communications as well as everyday calls.
None of this is new. In March 2014, Community Impact reported dropped calls in Sterling Ridge and at Waterway Square. Carrier maps from that time showed weak areas around Sterling Ridge, west of Kuykendahl and east of FM 2978. Residents also named May Valley and Carlton Woods. AT&T gave a two-part explanation that still holds. Heavy tree cover and dense populations both require cell sites to sit closer together than they would in open country.
So the forest needs more towers than usual, and the community's land rules have made towers harder to place than usual.
Why towers couldn't go up on most of the land
In March 2025, Township IT Director William Pham described two separate problems. Some areas have towers too far away or lack small cells, which is a coverage problem. Others have too many users on the sites they do have, which is a capacity problem. He said a tower needs roughly an acre, and he noted that carriers had asked before and been turned down under the developer's land-use agreements.
Those agreements with Howard Hughes Holdings restricted commercial communications towers on Township property. In December 2025, Community Impact reported that the Township and the developer were discussing waivers, and the Township put out a request for proposals covering 10 candidate sites.
Private land is mostly ruled out for the same reason. The September agenda says most private parcels in the critical coverage areas are "residentially zoned, deed-restricted, or have land use rights that are unwilling to permit tower development." Texas law, Section 26.001 of the Parks and Wildlife Code, requires a public hearing before parkland can be used for a non-recreational purpose. The hearing has to show that no other viable property can do the job. The agenda makes that case for each site using elevation, distance and lot size.
During the meeting, staff said the same thing. Deed and land-use restrictions prohibit cell towers on much of the land, which leaves Township property as the workable option.
Ten parks on the list, three approved
In April 2026 the Township awarded the contract to Diamond Communications. Community Impact's report on the award described a $50,000 payment per tower at lease and construction and a revenue share to the Township of up to 55%. Community Impact's preview of the April vote described the bid as a 25-year contract.
A propagation study picked 10 sites based on coverage gaps, elevation and whether a site could host all three carriers. The September vote covered the first three. Each lease is a pad of about 50 by 50 feet inside an existing park.
| Candidate site | Status after September 17, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Terramont Park | Lease approved, phase one |
| Cattail Park | Lease approved, phase one |
| Rob Fleming Recreation Center | Lease approved, phase one |
| Alden Bridge Sports Fields | Named as likely next if it can move forward |
| Windvale Park | Candidate |
| Fire Department Emergency Training Center | Candidate |
| Lakeside Park | Candidate |
| Bear Branch Park | Candidate |
| Shadowbend Park | Candidate |
| Tamarac Park | Candidate |
Some early reports listed Tamarac among the approved three. The Township's official Boardroom Briefing and the meeting agenda both name Terramont.
At the hearing, Diamond's representative said Cattail was the worst-covered of the three phase-one areas. In the discussion, the Rob Fleming site was linked to coverage around TreeVentures and the preserve.
The towers will look like pines
The towers are "mono-pines." The agenda says this design reduces visual impact compared with a lattice or monopole tower, though at 120 feet a tower can still stand taller than the trees around it. The agenda says the sites were chosen at developed park facilities, not undeveloped areas, and that the ground will be restored after construction.
Diamond said each 50-by-50 pad holds ground equipment. A typical carrier needs a 12-by-20-foot area, and the 50-by-50 size is meant to make room for three carriers.
The company said each tower reaches about a mile, depending on height. Its representative compared it to a flashlight. The higher the source, the wider the light spreads, and the thinner it gets at the edges.
The Township's modeling projects that all 10 sites together would remove about 90% of the unreliable coverage areas identified today. That figure is an engineering model of the full buildout. It isn't a measurement of the three towers approved so far.
The carriers set the schedule
The Township owns the land, but the carriers decide the timing. Diamond's representative put it directly at the hearing:
"We don't build towers unless the carriers are ready to go and install on them because it doesn't do us any good. You don't want to look at a naked tree."
According to the representative, carriers had shown interest in all 10 sites at some point. Only three were ready to go, and each of those had one interested carrier. The goal is to add as many of the three major carriers as possible to each tower.
Here is the timeline as described at the September 17 meeting:
- Lease signing. The board authorized the President and CEO to sign the three leases, subject to final review by Township legal counsel.
- Reviews and construction. Diamond still has to complete environmental, FCC and FAA reviews. Construction is expected to take about nine to 10 months after the leases are signed.
- First towers on air. Diamond's estimate was "third quarter next year," which works out to roughly mid-to-late 2027.
- Further sites. Carriers usually release capital budgets in January and February, sometimes March. Alden Bridge was named as the likely next site, and the representative said finishing all 10 "may take that long," meaning about five years.
Some of the candidate parks still belong to municipal utility districts and are being transferred into the Township's name. That is one more step before those sites can be leased.
Parks are only part of the plan
Diamond also has its own lease agreements with Howard Hughes for sites outside the parks. The meeting transcript records one site on "Kirkendall" and another coming on Gosling. The representative said he hopes the Township sites and the Howard Hughes sites together will cover the community.
At the same September 17 meeting, the board approved 11 Verizon utility easements on its consent agenda. They allow Verizon to replace existing streetlight poles with poles that hold small-cell nodes.
The agenda groups the easements under area labels: Christian Academy, Gosling, Panther Creek, Rustic with three nodes, Shadowbend with two, Woodlands Parkway, Woodlands Parkway West and Cove. It doesn't list street addresses or a construction date. It does say new conduit through Township open-space reserves is needed to power the poles.
Shadowbend appears on both lists. It's a candidate tower site and has two of the Verizon streetlight nodes, and it's the park named in the street-call story told at the meeting.
How to see where your street falls
Each of these sites will require more public action before anything changes. The Township says it will hold a new public hearing each time it leases another park for a tower. Agendas are posted on the Township website three business days before each board meeting, and meeting videos are archived online. Diamond said light-pole replacements could also be considered in later phases.
If your home is about a mile from Terramont Park, Cattail Park or the Rob Fleming Recreation Center, you're inside the expected reach of the first phase. The carrier on each tower will matter too. Each phase-one site has one interested carrier so far, and the hearing didn't say which carrier is at which park, so improvement will depend on which network your phone uses.
At The Merlo Team, questions like where the dead zones are and when they'll close come up whenever a client compares streets in The Woodlands. We follow these Township decisions so we can answer them. If you're thinking about selling, cell reception on your street will be one of the questions buyers ask. Start with an Instant Home Valuation, and we'll include what's planned near your street in the conversation, in English or Spanish.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
