LEBANON — One addresses the shortage in housing, the other a surfeit of paper.

The Lebanon Planning Board has greenlighted two big construction projects, the first a 204-unit apartment building and the second a nearly 20,000-square-foot warehouse for Dartmouth College library materials.

Developers’ plan to build an apartment complex on Mount Support Road specifically designed to draw middle-income renters and the college’s plan for a storage facility to house library materials, books, magazines and pamphlets at the corner of Etna Road and Lombard Road both received unanimous approval.

The approval for apartments from developers Dick Anagnost and Ken Braverman was granted on the conditions that construction begin no later than this August on the first building of the four-structure project and the entire development be substantially completed two years later.

Anagnost told board members the time frame is one he expects to meet, despite supply chain issues caused by the pandemic.

The Mount Support Road project will be located directly across the road from where Dartmouth College is building a 209-unit graduate student residence, on a stretch of road that has seen the construction of multiple apartment complexes in recent years. It is scheduled to be built in four phases.

Building the project in phases over two years “will allow occupancy while buildings come online,” Anagnost said.

“You can see one of the these structures come to completion, and two of them are still out there just because we are waiting for materials to arrive in the order which we need them,” said Anagnost, adding “we are already receiving calls to reserve units.”

The apartment complex, which is estimated to cost between $45 million to $65 million to build and is drawing upon state and federal subsidized housing programs for financing, is designed with the intent of a three-member family paying $1,200 per month in rent, according to information the developers have outlined to city officials.

By contrast, it is no longer unusual to find “market rate” apartments in Lebanon and Hanover — including those at Anagnost’s nearby Altaria apartment complex on Route 120 — costing more than $3,000 monthly in rent.

Dartmouth’s plan to build a 19,672-square-foot library storage facility on property it currently owns at 56 Etna Road “will be the central storage facility for all library books that are not regularly used on the college’s Hanover campus” as well as for contents of the college’s Records Management Department,” according to the plan’s site approval application.

Jason Rouillard, a project manager in Dartmouth’s Project Management Services department, told Planning Board members that the Etna Road facility is intended to “house our excess library material, books, pamphlets, magazines.”

At the same time, Dartmouth will be “merging” its Records Management Department at the new structure, which be erected in a portion of the parking lot of Dartmouth-owned 56 Etna Road, where the Fresenius Kidney Care dialysis center is a tenant.

Four employees are expected to work at the library storage facility, Rouillard said, which according to the plan would include a 12,240-square-foot, 41-foot-tall high bay storage area with shelving accessed by a mechanical lift.

Dartmouth expects to break ground this spring or summer and take “14 months to complete,” targeting a fall 2023 occupancy, Rouillard said.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.

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