HANOVER — A presentation by Dartmouth College officials on revised plans shifting a 400-bed student housing complex to the west side of Lyme Road went downhill after a college official declared the new location “is the direction we’re going to go” and in the college’s eyes the question was “settled.”
The now-grassy field on the overgrown golf course adjacent to the Hanover police and fire department headquarters and across Lyme Road from the Co-op convenience market “is where we’re going to move ahead with permitting,” Rick Mills, executive vice president of Dartmouth College, said in his introduction before adding, “We’d love to engage with all of you on how that happens is what it looks like.”
Neighborhood residents who would be affected by the three building-plus-pavilion “apartment-style” housing complex for undergraduates — the first one to house students outside the core downtown campus — wasted no time in reacting unfavorably to Mills’ statement.
Deb Nelson, a former Dartmouth admissions officer, said she was “dismayed” that Dartmouth leaders had resolved “this will be built and built here.”
“Students valued and were attracted to attend a school where they could walk to the places they wanted,” she said.
Moreover, she added, the college’s explanation that the proposed undergraduate housing will be eventually part of the long-range plans to expand the campus north along Lyme Road “glosses over that the academic buildings just aren’t there yet.”
Nelson’s remarks, the first in a line of neighborhood residents raising objections at the microphone, drew applause from the more than three dozen people who came to a lecture classroom at Geisel School of Medicine on Monday evening to attend the first of five public meetings Dartmouth officials are holding in July and August to preview plans for the housing complex and to solicit community feedback.
“There are many of you here who probably wish this project wasn’t happening at all,” Mills acknowledged at the beginning. “But if it is going to happen, how (does Dartmouth) develop it in a way that is most sensitive and respectful to the neighborhood, to folks that use the area and how do we make it most successful for our students?”
Monday night’s session kicked off Dartmouth’s public campaign for its second attempt at building a student housing center at what college officials are dubbing “New North End,” a stretch more than a mile from the Hanover green and the heart of the core campus, that would be the first phase in long-range plans to expand the campus with academic and administration on the grounds of what has been the college golf course.
The first plan the college floated to build the student housing center on the east side of Lyme on a flat, wide-open space known as Garipay Field, met with resounding opposition from neighbors, faculty and alumni, who argued it would take out popular recreation fields, increase vehicle traffic with the need to shuttle students between their dorm and campus and deny them the benefits of living near their peers and campus activities.
The prospect of a satellite undergraduate residence located a half-hour walk from the main campus particularly rankles some Dartmouth alumni, several of whom remain in the Hanover area and were not shy about challenging the three Dartmouth officials and project architect who sat behind a table in the well of the lecture room.
One cast the project in nearly existential terms of what is at stake for Dartmouth behind the plan.
“I think what we’re talking about is if Dartmouth is going to wind up being an undergraduate campus with two campuses connected by a fleet of buses, or if is going to be something else,” posited Jim Wooster, a retired telephone company executive who now lives at Kendal and whose father, sons and grandson all attended Dartmouth. “And I would say that that would be a disaster.”
Dartmouth officials stress that the college urgently needs to expand its housing stock to manage the musical chairs-like situation where during any of the college’s four academic quarters there are more students to accommodate on campus than there are rooms to put them in.
But the housing crunch is becoming acute because Dartmouth is planning to embark on a “deep renovation” of its aging residence halls. That multi-year project is expected to displace hundreds of students per quarter, creating the need for new space.
And unlike traditional student living arrangements, which entail living either in a residence hall, fraternity or sorority, the Lyme Road complex envisions so-called apartment style living, where each unit would have a kitchenette, living area and separate bedrooms for occupants. Dartmouth officials say surveys reveal that there is a small but meaningful number of undergraduates, particularly students in the upper classes, who would sign up for a more quasi-independent living situation.
For Hanover residents who live in the environs of Lyme Road, Dartmouth’s long-range intent to build a “spine” of academic and administrations structures in addition to a student housing complex represents a sea change in the character of the community.
“I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 25 years and what I don’t hear any of you talking about is how radical this transformation is for people like me who have chosen this area because it’s relatively quiet,” said Miriam Osofsky, her voice cracking in emotion. She argued the expansion would cause the neighborhood population to skyrocket and would introduce “shuttle buses going up and down the line 24/7,” noting that Dartmouth has yet to show the public a traffic study or environment impact analysis.
Dartmouth officials contend that constructing student housing at other sites, such as East Wheelock Street in downtown Hanover or the south end of the golf course closer to the medical school, frequently cited by critics of the Lyme Road plans, would be too costly and complicated to meet the near-term need of the college — or would require sacrificing parking lots for which the college would not be able to find new locations.
Eventually, Dartmouth officials said, after the residence hall renovation program is complete, the intention is to bring the undergraduates back to the main campus and utilize the projected 120 to 130 residential units at Lyme Road for graduate student and faculty housing.
Not all the voices who spoke Monday evening are opposed to the Lyme Road residence complex, however.
Jessica Chiriboga, a junior from Glendora, Calif., who is involved with student government, pointed out that the housing crisis in the Upper Valley presents special problems for low-income students, and the Lyme Road option would address that issue.
“A lot my friends who identify as low-income students are not able to secure housing off-campus because you’re not guaranteed housing in your junior and senior years. So there’s a big concern about housing security, especially closer to campus,” she said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
