Hanover
The $20 million project at Dana Hall, which once was home to the library, will be a “complete remodel” of the 55-year-old building, adding a cafe, graduate student lounge and sleek glass facade, administrators said in filings submitted to the Hanover Planning Board.
“Essentially we’re doing a partial demolition of Dana, just to get down to the structural core,” said Joe Broemel, the project manager, who said the building would receive a new, energy-efficient skin, among numerous amenities.
Administrators hope to have Dana Hall ready for occupancy in fall 2019, Broemel said, with much of its space going toward undergraduate faculty offices. The new building also could serve as swing space for displaced offices and classrooms as other campus projects go forward.
Workers now are pulling down Gilman Hall, the adjacent former life sciences building that had been empty since 2010. It will be replaced with a parking lot, and a new system of walkways will open a more direct route from the McLaughlin dormitory cluster into that part of campus, which also houses the Geisel School of Medicine.
Broemel said that plans for a north campus academic center during the 3-year tenure of then-Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim had spurred discussion about the best use of the buildings, although Kim’s specific idea never came to fruition.
The work on Gilman and Dana, which were both built in 1963, will involve environmental controls for the removal of asbestos and PCBs, the latter being a class of chemicals once common in coolants and other building components that are now regarded as environmental contaminants.
The college’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety will work with the project managers to dispose of the materials safely and lawfully, officials said on the school website.
In other business, Dartmouth administrators also are planning a new rowing training facility, to be located next to the Friends of Dartmouth Rowing Boathouse near the Ledyard Bridge.
The $3.5 million, 6,500-square-foot facility would consolidate the college’s rowing facilities, adding “state-of-the-art” rowing tanks and numerous other improvements, administrators said. Rowing tanks are now in Alumni Gym.
Design sketches show the proposed building, a long, one-story rectangle, hooking on to the back of the existing boathouse by the Connecticut River.
Hanover Planning Board members are scheduled to address Dana and the rowing facility at their meeting tonight at 7:30 at Hanover Town Hall.
The Dartmouth Rowing building is in an earlier phase of the permit process called design review, whereas for the Dana remodel town officials and administrators are conducting a site plan review.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.
Correction
Dartmouth College is plan ning to build a new rowing training facility that connects to the Friends of Dartmouth Rowing Boathouse near Ledyard Bridge and would include new rowing tanks, replacing those now at Alumni Gym. It is not affiliated with Hanover High School teams. In addition, Dana Hall, the subject of a $20 million renovation by Dartmouth, and the former Gilman Hall are not part of the Geisel School of Medicine. An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the location and purpose of the boathouse project and Dana Hall’s status as a building serving both undergraduate and graduate students at Dartmouth.