Project envisions a new look for Keene’s Gilbo Avenue

A model designed and built by Keene State students John Delaney and Jack Hanson shows a conceptual mixed-use structure at the intersection of Gilbo Avenue and School Street in Keene. It shows a building with 40 housing units and eight rentable commercial spaces. (Photo by Hunter Oberst, Keene Sentinel)

If you were to turn onto Keene’s Gilbo Avenue from Main Street, you would see a small handful of shops, Lindy’s Diner, the remains of the former skate park, but mostly a corridor made up of empty space — pavement, parking lots and not much else.

However, a display at Keene Public Library shows the vision of Keene State students who were challenged to revamp Gilbo Avenue into an extension of Main Street: A collection of mixed-use buildings for both commercial and residential uses.

The effort was a partnership between the Monadnock Interfaith Project and students in a sophomore architecture class taught by Paul Fowler, who were asked to create designs that would attract residents and visitors to an undeveloped area of the city while also providing new housing opportunities. The result is a collection of carefully designed models offering a glimpse of this vision.

“Think of it like this,” explains Tom Julius, chairman of Monadnock Interfaith Project’s guiding council. “If you’re standing on Main Street and turn around and look down Gilbo Avenue, the idea is that it would just draw you in. It makes you want to walk down and see what there is.”

Ken Kost, a member of both the interfaith project’s guiding council and Keene’s planning board, added that a requirement for the project was that students’ designs had to conform to the city’s zoning codes, including those for building height. Most of Gilbo Avenue is in the downtown growth district, which allows for buildings with up to seven stories, according to the Land Development Code.

For the project, Fowler said that MIP acted as a client and his students were the designers making something that fit their specifications.

“The whole concept behind the studio is essentially to mimic the real world conditions of working in an office,” he said. “Students didn’t get their cues from me or any faculty member. Like in the real world, they were working with the wishes from the client.”

He added that Gilbo Avenue is an ideal spot for residential development due to its proximity to many downtown eateries and retailers. “Gilbo has a lot of opportunity just waiting to happen.”

The city as well as local organizations have long considered redeveloping Gilbo Avenue, most recently as part of an arts corridor.

If you ask Kost, he thinks Gilbo Avenue is a sort of missing link in downtown Keene, an area bursting with potential.

“It looks unfinished,” he said. “There’s this whole avenue of parking lots where you could build a lot of apartments of all kinds.”

Just as much as it’s an opportunity to fill in an undeveloped area of the Elm City, Gilbo Avenue presents an area to improve the region’s housing stock during a time when it’s worn thin.

The Southwest Region Planning Commission has reported that vacancy rates for owner-occupied and rental units are at record lows. In 2022, the rental vacancy rate was 0.7 percent, well below what SWRPC identifies as a balanced rental market (5 percent).

SWRPC projects that 4,659 housing units (owner- and renter-occupied) will be needed by 2040 in the state’s southwest region. Keene alone will need 1,019.

Kost can envision perhaps 500 new apartments on Gilbo Avenue. He hopes the students’ models will help bring attention to that corridor and inspire people to think about how it could be improved.

While a revamped Gilbo Avenue isn’t going to solve the housing crisis, Julius said it’s another approach to meet a growing need.

“A solution for the housing challenge is going to be multi-faceted,” he said. “The idea that all of this open space on Gilbo Avenue could be developed in smart, sustainable, attractive ways is part of the big puzzle that helps with the housing solution regionally.”

To make this a reality, Julius said developers need to be attracted and incentivized to build housing units and price them at a rate that people can afford.

Monadnock Interfaith Project recently helped launch the Monadnock Housing Development Fund in collaboration with Monadnock Economic Development Corp. The housing fund creates a pool of money developers can pull from in the form of low-interest loans to assist in housing projects. The fund aims to incentivize the construction of housing to increase the region’s affordable housing stock.

The interfaith project is a nonprofit coalition of area congregations and organizations that has led projects to increase social justice and tolerance in the region.

The group’s efforts in working to establish a housing trust fund go back two years.

“It’s designed to give developers low-interest loans to make these developments feasible,” Julius said.

The interfaith project hopes that, if properly developed, Gilbo Avenue could yield housing that meets the needs of people at various income levels.

“We know we need more housing for everybody,” Julius said. “We need to make housing affordable for everyone because we need all those people in our businesses.”

The Gilbo Avenue project is on display at the Keene Public Library through June 17.

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