Eastman Lake Development

A 3500-acre tract of woodland completely surrounding Eastman Lake and Anderson Pond in Grantham, N. H., 14 miles southeast of Hanover, is now becoming an unusual recreation community in which Dartmouth College has had a leading initiative role.

When this property was offered for sale three years ago, Dartmouth College, The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the Manchester Bank, and the United Life and Accident Insurance Company formed the Controlled Environment Corporation (CEC) and invested the necessary capital to purchase the land. These four New Hampshire institutions were determined to preserve the natural beauty of the area and were convinced that they could demonstrate that it was financially feasible to do so if it was carefully planned and developed as a four-season recreational community with minimum impact on the environment.

As a result of a search of several months for the requisite planning talent to attain its objectives, CEC retained the firm of Emil Hanslin Associates, whose achievements in community development and environmental design have attracted national attention. These include the award-winning recreational complex of New Seabury on Cape Cod and the residential community of Wesleyan Hills in Middletown, Connecticut.

Emil Hanslin and his associates devoted a year and a half to intensive study of the topography, soil conditions, ecology, history, and economics of the area and to formulation of the basic design for the Eastman development and plans for implementing the goals established by CEC. A dominant concept in the master plan is the preservation of the seven miles of lake shore frontage as part of 1000 acres of open space available for the enjoyment of the entire community.

As the Boston Herald-Traveler's real estate editor, William E. Dorman, wrote in the June 18 Sunday issue of that paper, . . the major innovation, one that is likely to make planning history, is an open space concept in which each owner actually owns the fee but permits easements for various specified uses depending on the area. It carries both the pride of ownership appeal, assuring continuing interest in the land, and a guarantee against sequestered land's development or abuse."

In addition to what he described as the usual amenities in such developments—golf, skiing, tennis, hiking and club facilities—Mr. Dorman said Eastman has a "superb location in the heart of the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee region."

He added that another amenity is "a form of government, or association, that combines both the democratic process of the town meeting system with the skilled forms of corporate management, a distillation of what many of us would like to see happen in our own state and municipal governments."

A tribute to the Eastman development has come from the publication Environmental Monthly, which has cited both CEC and Hanslin Associates for "initiative and innovation" and for "land use."

The project was launched last summer with construction of a visitor's center and resident office for the development team, several miles of access roads, water and sewage systems and the initial nine of an 18-hole championship golf course.

The reconstruction of the existing dam to raise the water level of Eastman Lake, which had been recommended by the U. S. Soil Conservation Service as a flood control measure after several years' study, has now been undertaken by CEC with private instead of public funds following the requisite approval by state agencies. Upon completion of the higher dam the lake will be two miles long or twice its present size.

The community will offer a variety of living accommodations including camping sites and condominium units as well as single family homesites of varying size and price. Each neighborhood within the community focuses on the lake, golf course, ski slope or some other "special place" and is designed to bring together families with common interests. These in turn are tied together by a unique circulation plan separating vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

The College's interest in this project was explained in a letter to New England alumni last fall from John F. Meek '33, Chairman of the Dartmouth College Investment Committee, and Paul F. Young '43, Treasurer of the College and treasurer of CEC. Since then more than 300 homesites have been sold, half of them to Dartmouth alumni, without any publicity or general marketing program. Eastman has already been praised for the quality of its planning and the degree to which it has succeeded in conserving the natural environment while making it more accessible to those who need the relaxation it provides from the strain of urban living.

The Eastman site was once owned by the Draper Mills, the world's largest manufacturer of bobbins for automatic looms, as a source for hardwood logs for bobbins. Hundreds of acres of the present timber growth will now be preserved through Eastman's "open space" grant concept, which will assure the future protection of the lake shore and other natural features of the New Hampshire environment.