Dartmo.

Hanover’s elms always make an interesting topic (Valley News).

Dartmouth’s Flickr photostream provides some unusual views, including a shot of the Borwell Research Building entrance, the recently remade memorial garden by the Hop, and the Dartmouth Cup, which was made in 1848 by the Crown Jeweler.

The tech incubator in Centerra, the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center, plans to expand using state and federal grants (Valley News; The Dartmouth).

Rivercrest plans have been moved back, and Dartmouth hopes to put modular houses on the site (Valley News).

The Life Sciences project page has some new information, but the best gauge of progress is the webcam. The building is beginning to take shape. This is a very long project that will not end until August 2011 (Capital Projects Schedule [pdf]).

The replacement Co-Op Food Store on Lyme Road opened in December (Valley News, store photo gallery).

There has been little news on the proposal to totally redevelop the nearby Rivercrest (preliminary site plan, Wolff Lyon Architects’ page), and this, too, is probably delayed by the downturn.

[Update 06.13.2009: Trumbull-Nelson's magazine has a story on the Co-Op Food Store.]

Trumbull-Nelson has demolished the old Co-Op Food Store and gas station at the intersection of Lyme and Reservoir Roads. The Co-Op is building a replacement on the site (more info) designed by UK Architects of Hanover; the minutes of the Planning Board (pdf) indicate that the landscape architects are ORW Landscape Architects & Planners of Norwich.

The new store, which will not contain a gas station, will face the traffic circle at the intersection and will complement Dartmouth’s Rivercrest redevelopment across Lyme Road, forming a part of what is in essence a new town north of the golf course.

The College’s real estate arm has posted news of its large New-Urbanist housing redevelopment up by the Rugby Clubhouse and Pat & Tony’s. It will take the name of the prior housing tract of the early 1960s, Rivercrest.

According to a list by City-Data.com, the cities over 5,000 people with the highest percentage of people walking to work are (predictably) small places centered around a military base, a college, or some combination of the two:

1. West Point, N.Y. (pop. 7,138): 57.7%
2. Air Force Academy, Colo. (pop. 7,526): 56.3%
3. Fort Gordon, Ga. (pop. 7,754): 53.0%
4. Twentynine Palms Base, Cal. (housing, pop. 8,413): 48.0%
5. Lackland AFB, Tex. (pop. 7,123): 47.4%
6. Hanover, N.H. (pop. 8,162): 47.2%

The list lends support to the general sense that city planning conducted by a relatively authoritarian central body creates superior places.

In some ways it is surprising to see Hanover on the list, since the story of Dartmouth’s growth over the last 30 years is that of faculty moving out, the “Hanoverizing” of Lyme and Norwich, the creation of school-supported suburbs such as Centerra and Grasse Road, and so on.

(Other tidbits from the website’s lists: The towns in the four zip codes with the lowest crime are named Sleepy Hollow, Pleasantville, Economy, and Prospect. The city over 50,000 with the lowest average temperature is Anchorage, at 34.3 degrees F, which handily beats Duluth and Fargo and a surprising number of cities in Arizona. It is probably a quirk of the zip code divisions in Fairbanks that prevents that city from appearing on the list.)

The Dartmouth reports that the College and the Hospital will begin their complete redevelopment of Rivercrest. The old late-1950s housing development out by Kendal was the conceptual if not actual heir of the World War II shipyard housing used in Wigwam Circle, by the River Cluster. Although the project has sometimes gone by the name “Dresden Village,” it looks as if it will keep “Rivercrest.” Almost 300 people will live there, the Valley News reports.

The plan is one developed by Wolff Lyon Architects in 2004 (previous post). The Real Estate Office has a page that will provide a site plan and other information.

A news release explains the elaborate remaking of a 1960s Lord & Burnham greenhouse donated by the Cold Regions lab next door.

Landscape architects Winston Associates announced during 2004 (Internet Archive page) that Dartmouth had selected Winston and Wolff-Lyon to plan a 200-unit Sand Hill neighborhood that would include an integrated parking/transit transfer center.

Sand Hill does not seem to be a prominent landmark in Hanover or Lebanon. A Parking Committee Recommendation describes Sand Hill as an undeveloped site with room for 450 parking spaces, while the OPDC parking spreadsheet (Excel file) indicates that 300 new parking spots are expected to open in the Sand Hill Lot during fiscal year 2007.

The Boulder-based firm of Wolff Lyon Architects, which developed some of the guidelines for the massive redevelopment of Denver’s Stapleton Airport as a town, worked with Boulder landscape architects Winston Associates to complete a master plan for Dartmouth’s total reconstruction of its suburban Rivercrest housing development, north of CRREL and south of Kendal. This project, also known as Dresden Village in planning documents, seems to be taking a while in the town’s regulatory process.

(More on the firm from Wellington in Breckenridge, Colo. Is it coincidence that the master planner for Kendal at Hanover, adjacent Rivercrest, is another Boulder firm, Architecture Incorporated?)

[01.25.2007 Update: Winston link added.]

A planning group has made available a set of drawings related to the Dresden Village Center idea. A small second town may emerge near Reservoir Road, concentrating the various elements that already exist there in scattered form.

The Valley News presented a story on the proposed Dresden Village back in January.   The project sounds as if it will present a new-urbanist contrast to Centerra (map [pdf]), begun two decades ago.   Rivercrest (aerial), just past CRREL, presently occupies the village site and is a stereotypically suburban and low-density development.

Architecture Incorporated of Boulder, Colo. designed the master plan and community center for Kendal at Hanover, the 250-unit continuing-care retirement community north of town just past CRREL and Rivercrest [Terraserver aerial].   Perkins Eastman Architects PC of NY designed some or all of the Kendal’s housing; the site includes an 1801 farmhouse that was renovated in 1998 to serve as a guesthouse.

The Valley News reports on the largest construction boom in recent memory, with $180 million in College and Town projects underway.

The Town votes at the Town Meeting on May 10 whether to spend $50,000 to build a roundabout (1.5mb pdf map) at the intersection of Lyme Road and Reservoir Road.

The Rivercrest development on Lyme Road will be razed to make way for a 300-unit Dresden Village Development according to the Valley News.

The facilities plan, “Dartmouth and the Upper Valley:A Special College and a Special Place” is on line and describes several interesting projects apparently not yet settled on, most notably a A “Commons House” behind Dartmouth Row that will provide social spaces.   Others include the renovation of Thayer Dining Hall for social and performance spaces; a Tuck residence hall adjacent Whittemore; 145 residential units in Grasse Road faculty/staff housing; 200 apartment units in Rivercrest, north of campus; and a parking garage south of Cummings for 750+ cars.