Keene contemplates new housing on Gilbo Avenue

Keene residents and city officials have spent the past several years envisioning ways to transform Gilbo Avenue.

The city considered adding a parking garage there, a local arts nonprofit helped imagine the area as an arts corridor and Keene State College architecture students designed housing developments for it. But besides a solar pavilion slated for next year, development on Gilbo hasn’t gained steam.

The city wants to build momentum with an application submitted earlier this month to host two-day public planning sessions that would bring together community members, city officials and development experts to reimagine the avenue with housing and multi-use development. The sessions would be part of the city’s ongoing effort to activate and align the corridor with the rest of downtown.

“It presents a compelling opportunity to transform underutilized land into a mixed-use neighborhood that expands housing choices, supports local businesses and strengthens connections to the downtown,” the city said in an application submitted to Plan NH, the organizing nonprofit.

In addition to the application, the city submitted letters of support from the City Council and Planning Board on Tuesday to Plan NH.

The nonprofit facilitates these events, called design charrettes. A charrette is a meeting that brings together stakeholders to find solutions to a problem.

Over two days, the community comes together to articulate how it wants to develop a certain area. Experts with Plan NH then help design and make recommendations for what development could look like.

The charrettes are meant to help cities and towns grow downtown districts, housing, public spaces and more, according to the Plan NH website.

If the nonprofit approves the city’s application — which Keene Senior Planner Mari Brunner said could happen next month — the community meetings could take place in the spring.

The program could help Keene meet its housing goals by developing underutilized lots, diversifying the city’s housing stock and establishing a mixed-use connected urban center, the application said.

The city found in a 2023 study it needed to add about 1,400 units by 2032 to meet housing demand, assuming the population remains stable.

Gilbo Avenue is zoned to encourage new construction and reuse of old structures to build a mixed-use neighborhood with housing, retail, public gathering space and more to revitalize the area.

Several Monadnock Region towns, in addition to communities throughout the state, have participated in Plan NH’s charrette program. It helped Jaffrey reimagine the Jaffrey Mills into apartments while maintaining its historic facade. It also helped Winchester and Peterborough plan downtown zones they’re still developing.

The program fee is about $6,500, but Plan NH can waive the fee for Housing Champion communities, which Keene was designated in 2024.

The city does not plan to develop lots on Gilbo Avenue itself, Brunner wrote in an email, but it has adopted incentive programs, streamlined permit approvals, obtained various grants and updated the land code to encourage housing development. The charrette could further advance the city’s efforts by building community support and showing developers the city is willing to be a partner, she added.

“Our goal is to be ready so that, when an opportunity comes our way, we’ve done everything we can to encourage the development our community wants to see,” Brunner wrote.

Resident Ken Kost, who is also a planning board member, brought the charrette idea to the city and has long supported redeveloping Gilbo Avenue. He said he’d like to see mixed-use residential and commercial space with market rate and low-income housing.

He said Gilbo Avenue is an area of the city that “isn’t finished yet.” It’s ripe for development to bring in new residents, extend the downtown and grow the city’s tax base, he added.

A 2023 study says the city needs to add 1,400 units by 2032 to meet housing demand

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