HANOVER — A Dartmouth alum plans to renovate a Main Street building he lived in as an undergraduate by adding 31 apartments.
“Fifteen years ago, I was a tenant in the building, and the desire to come back to Hanover was driven by both my love for Hanover and my time here, but also the need for housing,” Hanover developer Jon Livadas said.
Livadas and a group of investors own the building located at 5-15 South Main St. under Davison Hanover LLC. They purchased it for $6 million in 2020 from the Davison family, who built the building.
The first floor of the building is occupied by three primary businesses: Dirt Cowboy Café, Murphy’s on the Green restaurant, and a Simon Pearce retail store. The second and third floors have a total of 13 two-bedroom apartments and is home to Left Bank Books, a used and rare bookshop.
The approximately $7.5 million renovation aims to demolish the back half of the building and construct a five-story addition in its place, according to filings with the Hanover Planning Board, which greenlighted the project during a review on July 22.
The addition will result in a total of 44 apartments with a mix of 14 studios, 26 two-bedrooms, and four three-bedrooms. Rent for the apartments will be market-rate. The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Grafton County last year was $2,027, according to the New Hampshire 2024 Residential Rental Cost Survey Report by New Hampshire Housing.
“The net gain in units this close to the center of town is very helpful,” Jolin Salazar-Kish, a prominent landlord in Hanover and owner of Kish Consulting and Contracting, said.
The trend has been that as more housing is offered closer to the center of town, people who live farther away and want to be closer will occupy the new units, freeing up their previous homes for others, she said.
“Those vacated units add to the stock of more affordable housing, while the new units will usually be less affordable due to the cost of development in that location,” Salazar-Kish said.
Livadas is no stranger to housing development in the Upper Valley. He is part of a group working to develop a site off Mechanic Street in downtown Lebanon with nearly 200 units of housing and also redeveloped the former Ruger Mill on Sunapee Street into housing in Newport.
The Hanover project fits into the town’s Sustainability Master Plan, which emphasizes the importance of “keeping the downtown core vital,” Hanover Senior Planner Alex Taft said, including by providing both residential and retail opportunities.
The college is supportive of the project, Dartmouth spokeswoman Jana Barnello wrote in an email. She commended the town and local developers for “exploring a variety of options to address the critical housing needs of our community.”
Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock has made housing a priority. In her inaugural address in 2023, she said the housing scarcity “is one of the biggest sources of stress in our community” and announced a plan to build 1,000 new beds for undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff within 10 years.
Upon hearing about the proposal, Dartmouth students were optimistic that the new development will increase off-campus options.
Matthew Koff, who graduated in June, lived off campus twice while obtaining his undergraduate degree. He described the process of finding a lease as “definitely stressful,” with few options and difficult landlords.
“… Some of the landlords in Hanover sort of take advantage of students in a way, and so I just hope that doesn’t happen with this proposal, and I hope they’re fairly priced and nice,” Koff said, noting that some landlords charge high rents for low-quality apartments and students sometimes struggle to get their deposits back at the end of a lease.
“It feels like because there’s such a limited inventory, the landlords can sort of do whatever they want, and people are still going to want to live in their units because there’s so few options,” Koff said
Dartmouth senior Tobin Yates lived at Summit on Juniper, off Mount Support Road near Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. The 10-minute drive to campus caused issues with parking in Hanover or being sure to catch the shuttle to and from campus on time.
In contrast, the new proposal’s proximity to campus is an attractive feature.
“Being close to campus can be crucial for staying involved in club activities, attending office hours, seeing friends, and any other events take place outside of classes,” Yates wrote in a text message. “Dartmouth has a lot of things that happen spontaneously or on the fly, and as a result living a 10-minute drive away from everything would cut down on one’s ability to stay involved.”
Although students have historically rented there, anyone can live in the building, Livadas said. He’s also hopeful that the project will inspire others like it.
“I’m really excited about renovating a historic building in downtown and kind of setting an example for well-thought out development,” he said.
Taft said the next steps will be seeking zoning and building permits, which are administered internally.
The developer’s filings with the town indicate construction will begin next April and end in October 2027.