WEST LEBANON — The City Council shot down a proposal to sell three city-owned lots to a developer to build affordable housing and possible retail units on Main Street. Next steps are not yet clear.
The plan did not meet the council’s vision of a project to revitalize West Lebanon and was too much of a loss on the properties that the city bought for $1.75 million in 2023, councilors told developer Don Wells, founder and chairman of DEW Properties, at a May 6 Council meeting.
Williston, Vt.-based DEW Properties proposed buying the lots for $700,000 and partnering with Twin Pines Housing to build 32 units of affordable housing and possible commercial space in a multi-story building that would span the current lots at 14, 28 and 30 Main Street.
The council opted to take no action on an option agreement to sell the land and plans to discuss next steps for the properties at a future meeting.
“We’re very much invested in there being housing for people of all different degrees of economic means,” Councilor Andrew Faunce said at the May 6 meeting. “This project — at this location and for the purposes of revitalizing a downtown that is on the way down — strikes me as really not the right fit.”
Councilors worried that an affordable housing project on Main Street would over-saturate West Lebanon, with 29 affordable units already around the corner at the Tracy Community Housing Project and 100 more units less than a mile away at the Village at Crafts Hill.
Faunce, who served on the West Lebanon Revitalization Advisory Committee before joining the City Council, said the group had hoped for a market-rate housing project with a definite retail component..
He questioned when the project had progressed from that vision to an affordable housing complex: “Somewhere the story changed, and the committee never got back and looped in on it.”
After buying the properties in 2023, the city tasked the revitalization committee with surveying West Lebanon residents about how they should be redeveloped.
The city then sent out a request for proposals to convert the lots into retail and residential space and received no responses. Staff in the City Manager’s office next reached out directly to DEW Properties about the project.
In August 2025, while the city was undergoing a leadership change, the City Council authorized the City Manager to start “further negotiations” with DEW and entered a formal pre-development agreement with DEW in September, after current City Manager Andrew Hosmer came to Lebanon.
Wells, the developer, maintained throughout the meeting that the project will not work financially without affordable units and the subsidies that come with them.
“I think if you want to see something happen there soon, this is the route to go,” Wells said.
He also pushed back on the assertion that tenants in a workforce housing complex wouldn’t have the means to spend money in West Lebanon, pointing out that many people such as teachers or nurses could qualify for the apartments.
Workforce housing is typically available to people making up to 120% of the area median income and affordable housing up to 80%, Wells said.
Most councilors were also put off by the sale price in the DEW proposal, more than $1 million less than the city bought it for three years ago.
“The gap between the net gain and the loss is just not palatable,” Councilor Lori Key said. “We’re asking our taxpayers to become investors in a proposition that they’re not going to get paid back for too, too long.”
City Councilor Tim McNamara also said he did not understand the proposed purchase price, recalling that they city bought the land for around the assessed value in 2023.
The lots are assessed at a combined value of $1.731 million, per the city’s own reassessment completed in 2025.
The assessed price would put DEW on the hook to pay $60,000 per unit of housing, “almost three times what we’re seeing for most of these types of properties no matter what municipality we’re working in,” Wells told the Council.
And that math does not account for the commercial space.
The City Council agreed not to execute an option agreement with DEW Construction to purchase the property earlier this month, but opted to wait until a future meeting to discuss next steps.
“If we’re going to sit on this, the question we have to answer at some point, not tonight, is what do we want to see done with these properties and how do we want to proceed with that,” Mayor Doug Whittlesey told the council.
Some councilors, such as Eric Cole, proposed selling the land as soon as possible, while others said they would prefer to wait and continue to hold the lots until they come up with an alternative project.
Councilor Laurel Stavis, who is also a Democratic state representative, said she wanted to open conversations with the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs, or BEA, which might be able to provide more support or funding for a revitalization project for Main Street.
She said projects such as the reconstruction of the dry bridge that connects Main Street to the shopping plazas on Route 12A that is underway and a proposal to build a new childcare facility on Seminary Hill are already bringing some revitalization to the area. She wants to build on that.
Stavis has not yet started conversations with the BEA, she said Wednesday. She plans to kick off the project after the legislative session ends in early June.
“I think that that part of downtown West Lebanon has immense potential,” Stavis said in a brief interview Wednesday. “Thousands of cars go by there everyday, it would be ideal for businesses and we just have to find the right partners.”
Since the meeting, members of the City Council and West Lebanon Revitalization Advisory Board have continued to discuss the project, City Manager Andrew Hosmer said Wednesday.
The city has also continued conversations with the developer about alternative ways to use the lots and DEW still has a “strong interest in a project,” Hosmer said.
Wells did not respond to a request for comment by deadline on Wednesday.
While the council discussed bringing the project up again at an early June meeting, Hosmer said the conversation is not yet on the agenda.
