HANOVER — The town’s Zoning Board of Adjustment will deliberate on Thursday whether to grant Dartmouth College a zoning permit to build a 397-bed student residence on Lyme Road, a project that has faced vocal opposition from residents who are concerned about traffic safety and the project’s environmental and neighborhood impact.
Last Thursday the Zoning Board concluded its public hearing for 30 Lyme Road, where Dartmouth College seeks to build a three-building residential complex to house approximately 400 undergraduate students on college-owned property. The plan includes a three-story residential hall, a four-story residential building and the future construction of a 3,700-square-foot pavilion for student programs.
The Zoning Board held the hearing over three meetings on Jan. 26, Feb. 2 and Feb. 9. The hearing format consisted of several “phases,” including a presentation by the applicants, public feedback from community members and “rebuttals,” where the applicants and community members responded to previous remarks about the proposal.
Last Thursday, at the final hearing session, the Zoning Board discussed a peer review of the Dartmouth plan, which the Town of Hanover commissioned to assist the town planning and zoning boards.
The peer review, conducted by Greenman-Pedersen, an engineering consulting firm based in the Northeast, evaluated Dartmouth’s traffic study and plan for stormwater, lighting and noise control at the residential site. The review also assessed the site plan’s fit with the “character of the area” as described in the town’s Master Plan and in recommendations by the Lyme Road Village Planning Group, representing the area that includes 30 Lyme Road.
Notably, the peer review echoes the concerns of town residents that Dartmouth’s proposed buildings are “much higher” in scale and height than other buildings on Lyme Road.
The review also describes the architectural design of one building’s facade as “bleak” and “monotonous,” with “a large expanse of blank roof looming over Lyme road” and a 300-foot elevation that is “hermetically sealed off of the street.”
“GPI recommends that the applicant investigate reducing the height of (this building), which appears to be possible without losing program,” the review states. “We further recommend that the applicant incorporate design changes to improve the facade and landscape features.”
But the Greenman-Pederson consultants stressed that many of their recommendations were intended for a planning board discussion, where revisions to site plans and studies are made, not the zoning board.
“I can’t really say that the ‘character of the area’ in the zoning board has to do with site design,” Senior Transportation Manager Carolyn Radisch told board members. “It was something more aimed at the Planning Board.”
Though zoning boards factor “the character of an area” when considering permits, that criteria typically refers to ordinance regulations such as fence heights or wetland impacts, Radisch said.
Issues like whether a project design fits a town vision for the neighborhood is a planning board’s jurisdiction.
Other sections of the peer review, including the stormwater plan and the traffic study, were similarly focused on recommending plan revisions or improvements, rather than whether the project should be permitted.
David Jordan, director of project delivery, said there was not enough information in the stormwater drainage plan to conclude if the plan will comply with town requirements, though he recommended the town seek more information regarding where stormwater will go when it flows offsite, which the current plan does not specify.
Senior Project Manager Rebecca Brown, who reviewed the college’s traffic study, said the study should incorporate more analysis of potential pedestrian and bicycle traffic, which Brown believed will be more relevant than the number of vehicle trips, given that most undergraduates living at 30 Lyme Road are expected to use the college’s shuttle service than a personal vehicle.
Brown also recommended that the study analyze the total number of trips that residents at the complex might take per day and whether those times would be during peak traffic hours.
“It really assumed that every student is only making one trip during their entire day,” Brown said. “It did not take into account that people would have to make a return trip. It also didn’t account for the fact that people make multiple trips to and from the campus during the day.”
Philip Hastings, attorney for Dartmouth College, expressed concern that sections of the peer review that were not intended for the Zoning Board might influence the board’s decision.
“We heard from GPI that a great deal of what is in their report is geared toward the site review process and not your decision-making process,” Hastings told the board. “By having it all in a single report, my biggest concern, looking ahead to an appeal, is that all that information is in the record and it creates some messiness in terms of what you are considering and what you should be considering.”
Speaking to how the Zoning Board will factor the peer review in their deliberation, Chairperson H. Bernard Waugh, Jr., said, “Well, that’s something that we are going to have to decide.”
The Zoning Board will meet on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Town Hall Boardroom.
Patrick Adrian can be reached at padrian@vnews.com or at 603-727-3216.