People and Property: Real Estate and Construction News from Around NH

A downtown street in Hanover will be closed for about 18 months starting Wednesday to allow Dartmouth College to overhaul its heating system, as part of an effort to reduce the campus’ carbon emissions.
During construction, Crosby Street, which connects East Wheelock Street and Lebanon Street by Memorial Field, will be closed to vehicles, but foot traffic will still be allowed, Josh Keniston, Dartmouth’s senior vice president for operations, said in an email.

Workers from Cushing & Sons finished drilling a 500-foot well on the Dartmouth Green on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019, in Hanover, N.H. Tests will be done to see if the area can be used for a geoexchange system that would provide heat and air conditioning to some Dartmouth College buildings. (Jennifer Hauck/Valley News)

The street, which is next to the college’s heating plant, will be dug up to install a connection point for hot water distribution pipes that are being installed throughout campus.
The upgrades are part of Dartmouth’s transition to a geoexchange heating system, which the college described as something like a heating and cooling “piggy bank.”
The college says the new system will help reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels and campus is expected to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Dartmouth has an existing steam heating energy system, but those pipes, which move heat from the college’s central plant across campus, are not equipped to hold hot water and have to be replaced, according the college’s website.
A geoexchange heating system pulls excess hot air out of buildings in the summer and transfers the heat to water stored deep underground. Because the temperature is more stable underground the water stays warm into the winter, when heat can be transferred back into the buildings through electric heat pumps.
In winter, cold air is drawn out of buildings and stored underground for summer use while the stored heat is pumped back into the building. This paves the way to retrofit the system with other efficient tools such as electric heat pumps and solar panels.Last year, Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock committed to invest $500 million through 2030 to “accelerate infrastructure renewal and deferred maintenance” and make campus more energy efficient.
— CLARE SHANAHAN/VALLEY NEWS

Salem receives $1 million in state funding to support housing infrastructure, production

The town of Salem has been awarded $1.15 million in state funding to pursue housing production and infrastructure projects as one the state’s recognized housing champions.
Late last year, Salem, alongside 17 other towns, was designated a housing champion for demonstrating leadership in fostering affordable, accessible and sustainable housing developments, which made the town eligible to receive the funding from the Department of Business and Economic Affairs (DBE).
Salem was the recipient of two key grants, the Housing Production Municipal Grant and the Housing Infrastructure Municipal Grant, which gave out a total of $5 million to eligible communities. On Monday, Salem received monies from both grants in the amounts of $297,000 and $859,700, respectively.
The $859,700 in infrastructure funding will help support the Brady Avenue upgrade and expansion project, which should be finished by the end of May, said Andrew Dorsett, housing finance director for DBE.
Once the project is complete, the improved water infrastructure will support Whistle Hill Development, a 10-unit, single-family development and give them the option to connect to main water lines instead of relying on private wells, Dorsett said.
The seven towns selected for the infrastructure projects must use the funds to upgrade sewer, water, electrical or fire suppression infrastructures that directly support residential housing developments.
In Salem, the water expansion will also enable the redevelopment of the golf course property to yield an additional 50 to 75 residential units, Dorsett said.
“We don’t necessarily want the golf course to be developed anytime soon but it would allow for additional capacity for residential development in the Brady Avenue area,” said Salem Planning Director Jacob LaFontaine.
At this time, plans for redevelopment are not underway or known to the Planning Department, he said.
The town only became eligible for the production grant with the completion of the Depot on Main project which saw the addition of 74 additional housing units on Main Street, 10% of which are workforce housing, LaFontaine said.
The pending grant incentivized the town to expedite the work.
“We can use the $297,000 broadly as the community would like,” he continued. “So far, we just adopted the Master Plan and the hope would be to use some of the funding to pay for an update to the zoning ordinances to ensure congruency with the Master Plan.”
Of the four towns selected for housing production projects, Salem, Manchester, Nashua and Newport will complete the needed infrastructure improvements that could lead to the construction of nearly 400 new residential housing units.
— JAMIE L. COSTA/EAGLE-TRIBUNE

Existing zoning overlay near downtown could help Laconia’s housing redevelopment

A little-known and never-used provision in the Laconia’s zoning ordinance lacks incentives, but could help developers build denser housing if it were rewritten.
Section 235-21 of the city’s zoning ordinance lays out the Housing Redevelopment Overlay District, which is a small section of neighborhoods located in the area of downtown, established to: promote the redevelopment of affordable housing units; to encourage investment in multiunit housing stock; to increase the quality of living conditions for renters; to provide rental housing in close proximity to the central business district; and to preserve the character of the city’s urban neighborhoods.
But that section of the ordinance is arcane, unclear as written, and appears to provide no incentive to a developer to actually use its provisions. Ethan Wood, an attorney at Norman, Cheney & O’Neil, has plenty of experience representing developers before the city’s land use boards.
“I come here tonight, other than for my client, as a result of some prior input we received not only from this board, but also from the mayor with regard to affordable housing and workforce housing in the city. And I have specifically identified a section of your ordinance that I would strongly encourage the board to consider amending and to make it subject to innovative land use controls so that you can have some flexibility specifically with the density calculations,” Wood said at the June 3 planning board meeting. “That would be section 235-21, which is the Housing Redevelopment Overlay District. I am unable to find any application that has been submitted under that in recent years.”
That section of the municipal zoning ordinance was adopted prior to the state’s adoption of RSA 674:21, relative to innovative land use controls. The Legislature, in adopting that RSA in 2023, provided municipalities with a range of options to use in their efforts to shape land development in ways which reflect the goals of their master plans and address growth-related headaches.
“I think if the board were to make some modifications to this specific section, it may encourage additional affordable housing and workforce housing in the areas of the overlay district, which are already areas which would be ripe for this,” Wood said. “I know from discussions with a client that there is certainly the possibility of additional workforce housing in this overlay district, if there was more flexibility that this board had with regard to applications.”
Planning Director Rob Mora indicated there may be an opportunity for the city to look closely at that section of the zoning ordinance to make headway in sustainable housing development. There’s never been an applicant who used the overlay district since its adoption.
“We adopted this Housing Redevelopment Overlay District in the area of town just over here where it is most dense,” Mora said. “Since 1995, nobody has ever utilized the Housing Redevelopment Overlay District, probably because it’s not written very well and there’s no incentive to redevelop within that district with that ordinance — it’s just not very useful.
Potential incentives for developers which could be included in a rewrite of the ordinance are mechanisms to relax density restrictions, allowing developers to sell more overall units; abatement, which has been done in the city on several redevelopment projects in the past; or waivers for impact fees, which are assessed when a development is underway. PILOTS, or payments in lieu of taxes, could also be a somewhat novel incentive on the commercial side.
On the flip side, the city could require developers to satisfy performance standards in order to qualify for incentives. That could include restricting some number of units to lower rates for a set period of time, for example — the city has seen recent success in brokering such arrangements.
— GABRIEL PERRY/LACONIA DAILY SUN

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.