LEBANON — A Hanover developer’s plans to tear down a downtown boardinghouse and build two new apartment buildings on Bank Street will go back before the Planning Board on Monday.
Jolin Kish hopes to demolish 14 Bank St. and build a three-story apartment building with six units in its place. She is also proposing to construct a 40-unit structure with three floors of apartments and two floors of parking.
The new building, called 8 Bank St., will be set behind 14 Bank St. and the existing 10 Bank St. buildings.
The 40-unit building would be “obscured from full view by several buildings, and therefore not fully visible from any street,” Kish and architect Sue Reed wrote in an email Thursday. “It was designed by keeping in mind that it would show behind good-looking public and private buildings of several styles.”
Many historic houses on Bank Street, which also is Route 4 east of Lebanon’s downtown core, had horse barns behind them that were often bigger than a family’s main house, they said.
“Those design ideas were also followed by many of the wood-framed mills that used to line the Mascoma River,” Kish and Reed said, referring to some building that later burned down in fires. They said the new building would look like a mill in its rectangular shape.
Meanwhile, plans for the smaller 14 Bank St. are derived from the designs of Ammi Young, the Lebanon-born architect who designed the nearby Carter Mansion. Parking would be located in two garages under the 8 Bank St. building’s apartments.
A lower-level garage would contain 37 spots, while the upper garage would have 40, according to renderings. There also would be seven ground-level spaces around 14 Bank St.
“Since this is essentially an urban lot, we don’t have room for a large parking lot, so we had to do covered storage,” Dan Nash, the project’s engineer said on Thursday.
If all goes well, construction would begin in the summer of 2021.
Similar, preliminary plans unveiled last fall faced pushback from Lebanon historians and neighbors concerned about the project’s scale and demolition of 14 Bank St. The historic house was built in 1848 and was once occupied by Colbee C. Benton, a city merchant and two-term selectman.
At the time, planners asked Kish, who owns more than two dozen properties in Hanover and Lebanon, why she couldn’t restore the building, a proposition she says is too costly given its aging structure and past renovations.
In response, the large apartment block was broken up into two buildings. A lower, central section between the buildings would house a large, windowed central hall.
The move is intended to do away with the “original simple box” initially proposed, and was recommended by White River Junction-based architect Jay Barrett, who was brought on as a consultant, according to Kish and Reed.
The new proposal also includes seven fewer apartments than last proposed.
Still, neighbors have continued to oppose the development, arguing the proposed 8 Bank St. apartment would tower over surrounding homes.
Elm Street resident Heidi Connor said increasing the development is “just too much” for the site, which now holds 16 units, to handle.
She also expressed concern in an April 6 letter for those living at the boardinghouse, saying “it is imperative that these people are not displaced.”
Linda and George Armstrong, who abut the project on neighboring Green Street, wrote the new apartment building would block natural light from reaching their home.
“It would add a great deal of artificial light during the night and winter, and the amount of traffic would increase way beyond its already overcrowded state,” they wrote in an April 7 letter to the city.
However, the proposed apartment block would fit within the Central Business District’s 55-foot height limit, which was implemented decades ago to allow for denser development downtown, according to Nash.
According to renderings, the new 8 Bank St. building would be slightly taller than the AVA Gallery and Art Center across the street.
“I think it was always envisioned,” Nash said of the building height. “It’s just shocking to some people because they’re used to the smaller apartments that we have in that area.”
The Planning Board is scheduled to discuss the Bank Street proposal at 6:30 p.m. Monday. The meeting will be streamed and available by telephone. People can find out how to access both at LebanonNH.gov/Live.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.
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