Hanover
The building would be constructed off the southern end of the MacLean Engineering Services Center, over what now is the Cummings parking lot, according to designs presented to the Hanover Planning Board.
The building, officials said, would also include an underground parking garage, designed to hold about 340 vehicles for additional faculty and staff.
“We’ve seen a transformation in the way students approach their liberal arts education at Dartmouth,” Thayer Dean Joseph Helble said during a conceptual meeting with the Planning Board.
Undergraduate students are more often looking to take engineering and computer science classes, he said, adding enrollment in the two fields has vastly increased over the past five years.
The college estimates that more than 70 percent of Dartmouth students enroll in at least one engineering or computer science course before graduation, and those courses often fill up quickly.
“It really has been a shift in the way students are viewing their Dartmouth education,” Helble said. “Students are excited about what this (building) is bringing us.”
College officials have described the proposed building as a “hub for innovation,” increasing collaboration between the two disciplines. It would be fully funded through donations to the college, officials said.
“Engineering and computer science have a natural synergy that will spark collaboration and innovation through their overlapping work in robotics, imaging, protein engineering and other areas of technological advancement,” Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon said in a March 28 post on the college’s website.
The building also would allow Dartmouth to double the size of Thayer’s faculty, and increase the computer science staff by 50 percent, officials told the Planning Board. Classrooms also will be freed up in existing buildings, they said.
The building’s garage also will eventually double the number of parking spaces around the engineering buildings that are available to students and faculty, said Kevin Worden, vice president of the Burlington-based firm Engineering Ventures.
However, some spaces will be lost in the short term, he said, as construction closes the Cummings lot, which holds about 100 cars.
To mediate the loss, Worden said, the college will be seeking to expand parking at the nearby Channing Cox parking lot, which temporarily would be able to hold about 120 cars during construction. The lot holds about 50 now, he said.
Traffic patterns in the area also are expected to change as construction starts.
Thayer Drive, which runs from West Wheelock Street to the Cummings lot, would be removed. The new buildings instead will be accessed through a new roadway called West Access Road, which would lead to the garage and West End Circle.
The college also hopes to reopen Old Tuck Drive, which is partially closed now. The road begins around the swim docks and Ledyard parking area and connects to the Tuck Mall, Worden said.
That road, which was built about 100 years ago, would be open to one-way traffic eastbound toward the main campus. Construction also would add a sidewalk and bike lanes to the road, which is about 20-feet wide, Worden said.
Planning Board members didn’t signal approval for or against the projects, and instead expressed concern about pedestrian walkways.
Hanover Planning Director Robert Houseman said the college specifically needs to integrate pedestrian crossings with the new roads, especially where Dartmouth intersects with the busy West Wheelock Street.
Members also expressed the need to begin permitting the projects soon, as the college is hoping to break ground in the coming months.
Pending Planning Board approval, Dartmouth officials said they hope to begin by expanding the Channing Cox parking lot this summer, followed by renovations to Old Tuck Drive in the fall.
Work on the parking garage could begin as early as fall 2019, and the building itself would then be completed by early 2021.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.