Hanover
The neighborhood around Tyler Road has launched a website, circulated fliers and filed an appeal to the Hanover Zoning Board of Adjustment in opposition to Dartmouth College’s proposed construction of an indoor practice facility next to the Alexis Boss Tennis Center, off South Park Street.
“This building is completely out of scale with the neighboring houses,” the group’s website says. “Dartmouth needs to find a more suitable location for this building, one that doesn’t abut a neighborhood. Help us send the Planning Board and Dartmouth a message!”
One of those neighbors is, herself, a member of the Planning Board.
Kelly Dent, one of the closest abutters, has appealed a decision from the town zoning administrator that Dartmouth’s proposed facility meets existing code requirements.
“I am worried about how it will impact the character of my neighborhood,” Dent said in a telephone interview Saturday. “I think the scale of the building is out of proportion to the surrounding homes. Because it has kind of an industrial aesthetics and kind of feels like a warehouse, I’m worried that our neighborhood will end up looking like a warehouse district.”
Dent’s appeal to the zoning board argues that Zoning Administrator Judith Brotman incorrectly calculated the height of the proposed structure.
Current plans for the indoor practice facility place it on an incline, making one facade about 10 feet taller than the other.
If measured from one end, the edifice would be just under 60 feet tall, the limit for a building front in the campus “institutional” zoning district. If measured from the other, it rises closer to 70 feet.
Together with their filings to the zoning board, Dent and her neighbors included drawings purporting to illustrate, at scale, the size of the facility. They include a picture of the building next to — and dwarfing — a jumbo jet, and a sketch showing several neighborhood homes fitting into the field house.
Jeff Doyle, a nearby resident who, until now, has criticized the proposed facility’s appearance more than its size, said most of the neighborhood had turned against it.
A letter accompanying the zoning petition signed by 36 neighbors asks the college to relocate the building to the nearby Blackman athletic fields or to Lyme Road, which is more distant but offers more open space. The letter also repeats the height measurement argument that is the basis of the appeal.
“I hadn’t really grasped the sheer scale of what is being proposed,” Doyle said in an email last week. “Neither, I gather, had most of my neighbors. But as time goes by, the reality has started to sink in and there is considerable opposition to the plan.”
Meanwhile, Dartmouth also has applied for a site plan review by the Planning Board, and Dent said on Saturday that she planned to recuse herself from that process.
Dent said she was not concerned that her opposition to the project might influence her fellow board members’ consideration of it.
“Outside of the Planning Board meetings we do not discuss any Planning Board issues,” she said. “None of the Planning Board members meet and discuss anything. I think it’s up to each member to decide whether there’s a conflict of interest.”
Dent, a stay-at-home mother of three who purchased her house in 2014, said she was not socially active with fellow board members outside its meetings. She added that “it does happen” that members weigh in on projects independently of their official positions.
The indoor practice facility, which will cost an estimated $17.5 million to build, is one of many ongoing Dartmouth building projects around town. College administrators have said they plan to break ground on the facility, which would include a synthetic turf field, hitting tunnels and multipurpose and training rooms, in November.
College spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said Dartmouth recently received the appeal but has not yet completed an evaluation of it.
“We will continue to engage with the neighbors in order to address their concerns,” Lawrence said in an email Friday. “We will make sure that our plans are compliant with zoning.”
The Zoning Board is scheduled to hear the neighbors’ appeal on May 26, and it typically deliberates the week after a public hearing.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.