We suspect that many Hanover residents will instinctively feel that the Planning Board made the right call earlier this month in rejecting Dartmouth College’s plan to build a $17.5 million, 70,000-square-foot athletic training facility off South Park Street. Indeed, the structure would have represented a massive intrusion on the residential neighbors forced to live in its shadow. At the same time, there is ample reason for concern about the basis for the decision and what precedent was set.

As staff writer Rob Wolfe reported, the Planning Board’s months-long site-plan review of the project ended with a 4-1 vote that vindicated the vigorous objections to the project lodged by neighbors along Tyler Road, who asserted that the scale and appearance of the structure would irredeemably degrade the residential character of their neighborhood. What made the decision unusual, and perhaps unprecedented, was that several members of the board readily conceded that Dartmouth’s proposal, which had been altered several times in an effort to placate the neighbors, fully conformed with the relevant requirements of the town’s site-plan regulations. Rather, the majority based their decision in part on aesthetic aspirations for development as expressed in the town’s master plan. The board’s lone dissenter, Chairwoman Judith Esmay, stated the opposing case succinctly. “I find we made no provision in our zoning ordinance” for aesthetic judgment, she said.

Julie Kim, who would have been among the closest abutters to the facility, recognized just how significant a departure from the norm the decision was, telling Wolfe that the board had looked beyond the letter of town ordinances to what the character of the town should be. “That was the right decision,” she said. “This is outside the box, really, in terms of rules and regulations. That’s huge.”

While we are on record as generally favoring outside-the-box thinking, land-use regulations would seem not to be the occasion for doing so. Indeed, they are intended to create a framework — a box, you might say — of standards that are to be applied evenhandedly in evaluating proposed developments. Generally speaking, town plans are viewed as articulating a vision for the future. It is the job of land use regulations to shape development, in an enforceable way, so that it conforms to that vision. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail, but all the parties at least know what rules apply.

Dartmouth may, of course, appeal the decision to Superior Court. Some Planning Board members practically issued an invitation to do so, by acknowledging that the project met the letter of the regulations. In fact, even if the college were inclined to relocate the proposed athletic facility, it may feel bound to appeal in order to protect its other future building plans rather than accede to a review process that could grow increasingly arbitrary. As one interested observer, Town Manager Julia Griffin, told Wolfe: “This is going to be an interesting case, because some would argue that there weren’t grounds to deny the project by the Planning Board.” If that proves to be the case, maybe it will be time to turn from the Planning Board back to the drawing board and draft amendments to the relevant regulations — if residents actually want to empower the Planning Board to make judgments about aesthetics and the character of neighborhoods.