Jolin Kish has been approved to develop 28 units on Bank Street, also downtown, notes David Brooks, Lebanon’s planning and development director.Īnother developer, Mike Davidson, recently purchased two acres at the site of the former Village Market at the edge of the city’s historic Colburn Park with an eye toward building a mixed-use project including retail, restaurant and as many as 240 housing units. Some of the units would be workforce housing and the rest market rate, according to Mulholland. in downtown Lebanon, following a massive cleanup of contaminants at the site. The two downtown districts in Lebanon and West Lebanon are likewise seeing a rise in housing construction interest.ĭeveloper Braverman has plans to construct a four-story, 94-unit apartment building on the site of a former Department of Public Works building at 20 Spencer St. The Lebanon Housing Authority is also constructing a 44-unit, three-story development for income-eligible residents on Heater Road not far away. ![]() The hospital has also started construction on a 212,000-square-foot, five-story Patient Pavilion, expected to open early next year. On another nearby site, Massachusetts-based Saxon Partners plans to build 250 apartments geared toward hospital workers.ĭartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is roughly a mile away. It would sit directly across from a 53-acre parcel where Dartmouth College is building a 309-apartment housing complex for graduate students. Many of them piggyback on existing developments, in keeping with the smart growth philosophy.Ī 204-unit housing complex aimed at middle-income tenants is proposed by two developers, Dick Anagnost and Ken Braverman, on the east side of Mount Support Road not far from the existing 252-unit Timberwood Commons complex. “There is a building boom, and it’s mostly residential,” he adds. Some 1,400 housing units are now under construction or approved in Lebanon, Mulholland says. Such an approach minimizes demand for new infrastructure and also makes for more walkable neighborhoods, according to City Manager Shaun Mulholland. The plan calls for concentrating new housing around existing infrastructure like water and sewer, and revitalizing underused properties when possible. That strains municipal services paid for by residents and has led to demand for more housing to accommodate those workers and to entice new ones to locate in the city.Ī housing shortage, particularly workforce housing, has afflicted most NH communities, but Lebanon is rising to the challenge following a “smart growth” approach detailed in its 2012 Master Plan and refined through subsequent “visioning” sessions. “That data alone shows how critical Lebanon is to the area’s economy,” he adds.īut with economic might comes challenges, as the daytime population of the city nearly triples from its census population of 14,300 as workers commute from surrounding communities. William Dunn, senior vice president at Mascoma Bank in Lebanon and chair of the Economic Development Commission, notes that there are 2.6 jobs for every working adult residing in Lebanon, with every other town in the region, except for Hartford, Vt., and Hanover, having fewer jobs than workers. ![]() The Upper Valley region straddles the Connecticut River between NH and Vermont, with its core cities Lebanon and Hanover in the Granite State and White River Junction in Vermont. “Lebanon itself is not a big city, but when you look at us in terms of our impact on the region, we punch above our weight,” says Karen Liot Hill, a 17-year member of the City Council and member of the Economic Development Commission. Lebanon has attracted such medical and high-tech firms as Novo Nordisk, TomTom, FujiFilm, Hypertherm, Celdara Medical and Adimab.ĭartmouth-Hitchcock Patient Pavilion under construction, above, and a rendering of the finished pavilion, below. “The growth is really in tech and biotech.” “The hospital and the college act as the big anchor, but all the growth that’s happening is with the spin-offs,” says Chip Brown, principal broker at Hanover-based Brown Commercial Realty and a citizen representative on Lebanon’s Economic Development Commission. Home to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and most of Dartmouth Medical School, and with Dartmouth College in neighboring Hanover, Lebanon hosts a variety of biotech and high-tech firms that have sprung from those venerable institutions. With some of the nation’s most renowned medical and educational institutions in its backyard, and two interstates looping nearby, Lebanon is the economic hub of the Upper Valley-and it’s growing.
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