Hanover
All three sites, which are located east of the Dartmouth Green, would require the college either to demolish existing structures or adjust other future plans. Regardless, the Hanover campus requires change to meet student demands, Executive Vice President Rick Mills said.
“Dartmouth has been evolving from the time that it started here, when Eleazar Wheelock showed up on the plain, and it’s going to continue to evolve,” Mills told an audience of about 15 people in Moore Hall. “As much as we think about preserving Dartmouth as it is, change has been one of the elements that’s been continuous through its history.”
Dartmouth is looking to build the new facility either at the former site of Gilman Hall, at the intersection of Crosby and East Wheelock streets or on College Street.
Construction at Crosby and East Wheelock streets would displace three tennis courts next to the Alumni Gym. And College Street construction would lead to the relocation of Dragon, the College Park home to a secret student society.
The college tore down Gilman Hall in April, with hopes that the former life sciences building would be replaced with a parking lot and new walkways.
As it looks to select one of the sites, Mills said, Dartmouth plans to weigh factors such as the availability of parking, proximity to dining services and community input.
“You’ll never get to a perfect optimization of all of them,” he said. “We’re balancing all of those competing considerations when we come up with ultimate site selection.”
Dartmouth officials say the new residential hall would provide “swing space,” or a place to house students as it renovates and maintains existing dorms.
“Really, the driving force behind why we need a new residence hall is the ability to actually empty some of our existing residence halls and begin to renovate them in a process that will probably extend over as many as 10 years,” Mills said.
There are about 3,100 beds for undergraduates on campus, which the college says it too little to meet demand. Dartmouth last built new dorms in 2006, when it opened the Fahey McLane and McLaughlin Cluster, which hold a combined 502 beds. It also renovated two residence halls since, but roughly half of the school’s housing stock hasn’t seen an upgrade in the last 15 years.
The proposals for a new building come nearly six months after the college abandoned plans to construct a 750-bed complex on 35 acres of forest in College Park. The notion of a large residential hall in one of Hanover’s few downtown green spaces drew opposition from both faculty and students, who worried it would be out of place near some of Dartmouth’s most iconic structures.
College Park is home to both the Bartlett Tower, a well-known symbol of the school, and the Shattuck Observatory, an 1850s-era building that contains offices for the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The observatory’s fate was unclear under plans for the new residential hall.
Finances ultimately killed the proposal. An engineering study revealed it could be costly to build atop the rocky ledges of College Park.
Mills said on Wednesday that the site has been “dropped from consideration” to hold the proposed 350-bed residence hall. However, he said, it could be used for future projects.
Those in attendance at Wednesday’s forum appeared to favor a residence hall at the intersection of Crosby and East Wheelock streets.
“It doesn’t make particularly good classroom space, and I can see wanting to use the Gilman and College Street spaces for classroom or lab buildings in the future,” said Julie Hruby, an assistant professor, to nods from the audience.
Hruby also encouraged the college to not just plan for a residence facility, but also examine how it would fit into larger plans for the school.
“It seems to me that you want to plan not just for the building but for the campus as a whole, and one of the challenges students have is getting from point A to point B within an amount of time,” she said. “Keeping classroom spaces and work spaces on campus as compact as possible has some benefits.”
Others expressed concern with building residences north of the green, where demand could someday build up for additional dining halls.
But a residential hall at Crosby and East Wheelock streets also would be located near Memorial Field, and could increase traffic, said Cyndy Bittinger, president of the Hanover Historical Society.
“It will increase the density quite a bit there and will impact the town I would say quite a bit,” she said. “Already, we have so much traffic in that area.”
Some alumni also asked Mills why Dartmouth chose to hold the forum during the summer, when much of the faculty and students are away.
“This project timeline keeps moving and it doesn’t care whether it’s summer or fall or winter,” Mills said, adding the forum was being live streamed for those out of town.
Dartmouth will be going to its board of trustees with a plan in September, and officials want to collect input before then, he said.
The college will host a second forum at noon today, followed by a third at 6 p.m. on Monday. Both will be held at the Filene Auditorium in Moore Hall.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.