LEBANON — An Upper Valley landlord is proposing to tear down a 171-year-old mansion-turned-boardinghouse near the Lebanon Public Library and replace it with two apartment buildings holding more than 40 units combined.
Jolin Kish hopes to demolish 14 Bank St. and build a three-story apartment building with six units in its place.
Behind that new building and 10 Bank St., which she also owns, Kish would construct a four-story structure that would have 36 two-bedroom apartments. Conceptual plans submitted to the city show the new apartment complex standing slightly taller than the AVA Gallery and Art Center, which is across Bank Street from the proposed project.
In an Oct. 10 letter to the city, Kish said the new apartment complex will be shorter than Rogers House, the senior living center downtown, and consistent with the neighborhood, which includes businesses and other multifamily homes on Green Street. The larger apartment building would be behind some of the homes that front the first block of Green Street.
In the letter, she wrote, “We are aware that this will be a dramatic change to a block that hasn’t had a whole new building built since the Post Office was built in the 1930s.”
Kish, whose holdings include nine properties in Lebanon and about 20 in Hanover, prompted an uproar four years ago when she built a 9,000-square-foot two-family home in downtown Hanover that neighbors described as an eyesore.
Kish did not respond to requests for comments on her project, which will go for a preliminary review before the Lebanon Planning Board on Monday.
Kish wrote in her letter that 14 Bank St., which she acquired in 2017, is one of the worst-preserved properties on the street and previous owners “cut up inside” to accommodate three apartments and eight rooms.
The new 14 Bank St. would have six two-bedroom apartments made to use less energy and be more accessible for people with disabilities, according to her filing.
Parking — 93 spaces for the three-building complex Kish owns — would be situated in two levels underneath the new rear apartment complex and accessed via two driveways off Bank Street, according to plans.
On Wednesday, ghostly decorations and caution tape adorned the building’s stairway and porch, which is a common hangout area for residents., according to Justin Lamb, who moved into a room on the first floor in July.
“This is a cool building, and I actually have a lot of good memories here,” said Lamb, who lives with Melanie McManamon.
The two said they met at Salt hill Pub in downtown Lebanon, where they work as servers.
“We’ve got a good group of people,” Lamb said of his neighbors, adding that the Halloween decorations were just one example of the building’s community atmosphere. Residents planned the decor for weeks, he said.
McManamon, who has lived in the building since May, said she would be disheartened if residents were evicted and replaced by those capable of affording more expensive dwellings.
“I live here and I don’t want the rent to go up,” she said. “We’re just really comfortable here, you know?”
Rent for a room had previously been listed at $600 a month, and residents on Wednesday said they were paying well under $1,088, the median cost of a room in the Lebanon area.
The federal-style building also has historic significance. It dates back to 1848 and is visible in the earliest photo of downtown in the Lebanon Historical Society’s collection.
The circa-1849 photo shows the structure nearly alone on Bank Street, surrounded by farmland and intersected by a stream.
For years, the building served as a mansion for Colbee C. Benton, a Lebanon merchant, two-term selectman and surveyor who recorded much of the route for the Northern Railroad, according to historian Robert Leavitt’s book Lebanon, New Hampshire in Pictures.
Nearby, Benton built a garden, complete with topiaries, pergolas and a round pond at the corner of Bank and Elm streets. The pond had a center island and arched bridge, with photos from the 1870s showing a rowboat.
An ell, which was part of a home where the Carter Mansion now sits, was later added to the building, according to Lebanon City Historian Edward Ashey.
“He was quite the businessman,” Ashey said of Benton. “He had a lot of property around Lebanon.”
While it’s sad to see a historic building go, sometimes their age and deterioration makes restoration too costly, said Ashey, who had heard the property was in disrepair. Kish has offered portions of the building to anyone willing to preserve it, but Ashey said that was a tactic more common a hundred years ago.
“Nowadays it’s just not feasible cost-wise,” he said.
While the building received historic landmark status by the city in 1998, the designation doesn’t protect it from destruction. And because the structure lies outside the historic district, the Heritage Commission won’t have a say in its fate, according to Robert Welsch, the commission’s chairman.
“We’d like for people in the neighborhood to keep their properties maintained, but we have no legal right to tell them so,” he said on Wednesday.
The Lebanon Planning Board is scheduled to discuss the Bank Street plans when it meets at 6:30 p.m. Monday at City Hall.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.
Correction
Robert Welsch is chairman of the Lebanon Heritage Commission. An earlier version of this story misspelled his name.