Plant Expansion

THE financial way was cleared for the construction of Dartmouth's four new dormitories on the old Clark School playing field when the Community Facilities Administration in Washington approved, in late October, a loan to the College of $1,500,000. The loan at 23/4% interest is to be paid off over forty years from student rentals. Contracts for the job are now being let, and it is hoped that ground will be broken before winter sets in.

Other plans for expansion of the Dartmouth plant, as part of the long-range program being shaped by the Trustees' 1969 Planning Committee, are moving forward. The design of the Hopkins Center, prepared by the noted American architect, Wallace K. Harrison, with the help of a special advisory committee, is scheduled to be laid before the Trustees at their January meeting. If architectural plans are approved, construction will probably start in the late summer.

A step toward the expansion of instructional facilities was taken last month when President Dickey appointed an Instructional Facilities Building Committee. This planning group is headed by Prof. Donald H. Morrison, Provost of the College, and includes Prof. John P. Amsden '20, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Plant Planning, and Richard W. Olmsted '32, Business Manager of the College.

New classroom and laboratory facilities totaling 120,000 square feet and costing an estimated $3,500,000 have been proposed to the Board of Trustees as part of the 1969 development program. The Instruc- tional Facilities Building Committee will review these proposals with the various faculty departments and inter-departmental groups involved and will then make specific recommendations to the Committee on Buildings and Grounds of the Board of Trustees.

The enlarged Thayer dining hall will be ready to resume operations immediately after Christmas vacation, and the first unit of the new faculty apartments on North Park Street should be occupied at the start of the second semester. Farther north, work is progressing satisfactorily on Dartmouth Skiway, at Holt's Ledge in Lyme, N. H. The first snow cover has already fallen on the trails, and plans are afoot to have a formal dedication of the new ski development when the Alumni Council meets in Hanover next month.

While all these things have been happening on the College building front, Hanover has been making an important change on South Main Street. There the old, unsightly Tavern Block, just south of the Nugget, is being demolished to make way for an urgently needed parking area. The Hanover Improvement Society has been assisted by the College in carrying out this community development.