HANOVER — Dartmouth College can keep its $200 million center for engineering and computer science in its current configuration, town officials decided on Tuesday night.
The Hanover Planning Board voted unanimously to allow the 160,000-foot expansion project to be built over its foundation, which was mistakenly dug about 10 feet south from where it was intended.
The decision is expected to save Dartmouth and its contractors a costly and time-consuming effort to relocate the foundation and building’s north wall, an option that was being considered as a backup plan.
“That’s what we’re dealing with and hoping not to move,” Joe Broemel, a senior project manager at Dartmouth, said while presenting a photo of a hole left from the construction.
Construction of the building, which will serve the Thayer School of Engineering, started over the winter but was halted as contractors prepared to install a crane at the work site in June. They found a hole dug to support the structure’s 340-vehicle underground parking lot was 10 feet south of initial plans.
The error was later blamed on the baseline survey, which is taken as surveyors measure distances between certain points on the site, according to officials at Turner Construction Co., the national firm hired by Dartmouth for the project.
The mistake left the college with two options — go back to the Planning Board and request a new approval, or move the hole.
Relocating could amount to a large undertaking that would entail moving the building’s north wall, which has 231 anchors, some of which extend 60 feet deep, college officials said.
And removing those anchors could cause settling in both the new building and the neighboring MacLean Engineering Sciences Center, they said.
Broemel outlined minor changes to the building plans on Tuesday, saying engineers attempted to keep walkways and lighting fixtures in place. Some grading, slopes and landscaping surrounding the building will be adjusted and the size of some green spaces will be modified, he said.
“In reality, all the major components are still in roughly the same place,” Broemel said.
Officials on Tuesday asked few questions about the project during the roughly half-hour meeting, with most focusing on how the new designs would affect residents and surrounding landscape. No one from the public commented during the meeting.
Board member Iain Smith asked whether moving the building will have any impact on neighbors, particularly those living in neighborhoods on the other side of West Wheelock Street.
Broemel said many of those neighborhoods have good screening in the summertime. But once the leaves are gone in the winter, residents will be able to see the building.
“In the winter, there’s a pretty clear shot across,” he said, adding the building would have been visible under old plans as well.
Dartmouth Provost Joseph Helible, the former Thayer dean, said the building initially was pitched to help the college expand computer science and other technology-based classes.
“I’ve been away from the engineering school now as dean for almost a year,” he said. “But things haven’t changed.”
Enrollments in computer classes continue to increase and there’s still a need for the space, Helible said.
“This project has been, of course, an important project to Dartmouth,” he added.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.