An artist's rendering shows the proposed 17,000 square-foot four-story addition to the Bridgman building in Hanover, N.H. The building on Main Street hosts the Canoe Club restaurant and the Dartmouth Co-Op. (Courtesy UK Architects)
An artist's rendering shows the proposed 17,000 square-foot four-story addition to the Bridgman building in Hanover, N.H. The building on Main Street hosts the Canoe Club restaurant and the Dartmouth Co-Op. (Courtesy UK Architects) Credit: —

Hanover — The town Planning Board last week approved a 4-story rear addition to the Main Street building that hosts the Canoe Club restaurant and the Dartmouth Co-op.

Geoff Colla, who is leading the project at 23 South Main St., an 1880s-era structure known as the Bridgman building, called the 17,000-square-foot addition an opportunity to boost downtown business without sacrificing precious parking space.

“Other owners downtown have found that the biggest challenge to doing something downtown is fulfilling the parking requirement,” he said in an interview.

So given that constraint, he said, “How can we make something happen so that we can try to recruit some larger tenants and try to offer that to the market?”

Colla and his colleagues at Connecticut River Capital, a Hanover-based private real estate investment firm of which he is principal and founder, decided to include an automated parking structure in the addition, which will stand behind the Main Street building on the site of an existing surface parking lot.

Colla said one large office tenant has booked about half of the new space, though he said he wasn’t yet authorized to divulge who.

Connecticut River Capital controls the Bridgman Realty Trust, the entity that directly owns the building and that now has secured approval from the town Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin and Planning and Zoning Director Robert Houseman concurred with Colla’s assessment of the project’s potential benefits.

“This project represents a great example of downtown infill,” Houseman said in an email on Tuesday. “The project fully complies with the town’s regulations and will bring a creative parking solution to Hanover and the Upper Valley. Also, an increase in employees in the downtown will help sustain and possibly grow the economic base of the downtown.”

Early projections from Colla and his contractors placed the build cost at roughly $3.6 million, but he said on Monday that estimates were now in flux.

The developers still hope to finish construction by the end of 2018, he said. Bridgman Trust’s public filings with the town indicate that the work is intended to disrupt tenant business operations as little as possible.

Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.