Residential Building Plan
FOLLOWING approval by the Board of Trustees at its January 7 meeting, the College later that month announced a program of residential building aimed at meeting the shortrange housing needs of its faculty, staff, and married students, and also of assisting the personnel coming to Hanover to work for the Cold Regions Engineering Laboratory.
Major items in the plan include: (1) The immediate development of twenty to twenty-five house lots of one-quarter acre each on College land north of Reservoir Road, to be offered to College and CREL personnel on an equal priority basis, and to contractors willing to build houses for sale to such personnel.
(2) Construction, beginning this spring, of an apartment house of ten to twelve units on West Wheelock Street, for rental to members of the College's clerical and technical staff.
(3) Construction as soon as possible of two sample prefabricated houses, one a single-bedroom unit and the other a two- or three-bedroom unit, in order to determine construction costs and the feasibility of building a number of both. If construction proves reasonable, the Trustees have approved in principle the erection of up to fifty one-bedroom units near Sachem Village on West Lebanon Road, twenty to be rented to College clerical and technical staff employees and the other thirty to married students. Similarly, the Trustees have approved in principle the building of thirteen two- and three-bedroom houses on College-owned land on Lyme Road, south of the CREL laboratory, to be rented to faculty and administrative staff.
Although new construction is designed only to meet the housing needs of College personnel over the next two years, it will considerably ease the housing shortage that would otherwise exist with the coming of CREL, and will make available to CREL personnel many privately owned rental properties now occupied by College employees. If the whole program is put into effect, the College will be adding 75 rental units to the 177 it now has for faculty, staff, and married students.
As a further assistance in the CREL housing situation, the College at its own expense has appointed Captain Thomas H. Tonseth, former com- manding officer of the Dartmouth NROTC unit, to be Assistant to the Business Manager of the College, with the primary assignment of helping CREL personnel obtain housing in the Hanover area. Captain Tonseth, graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy and Professor of Naval Science at Dartmouth from 1952 to 1955, has resided in Norwich since his retirement from active duty in 1955.
The residential development program approved by the Trustees was recommended to the Board by the Trustees Planning Committee, which in turn received proposals from the management consulting firm of Cresap, McCormick and Paget, which made a professional study of present and future housing needs in the Hanover area.
