LEBANON – Upper Valley property owner Mike Davidson has unveiled an ambitious mixed-use project that will create nearly 150 new housing units on the site of a former village market and redraw the skyline at Colborne Park Gate in central Lebanon.
Davidson’s Execusuite, which has redeveloped some former schools and commercial buildings up the valley into housing, offered to present the project earlier this month to the Lebanese Planning Council in what Chairman Bruce Garland described as an opportunity “just to bounce some ideas back and forth.” .
The Village Market, which has long served the senior residents of Rogers House across from Colborne Park, closed in 2018 and Davidson completed the purchase of the two-acre property this month.
Davidson, who lives abroad most of the year, was not present either in person or remotely at the planning board meeting, but COO Tim Sidor, along with architect Jim Wasser of White River Junction Studio Nexus, took the board members through their conceptual plans.
The first phases of the project will be two residential buildings, one of which is six storeys, 48,000 sq ft, 72 units and the other is 6 storeys, 55,000 sq ft, 75 units built in two separate phases. The Phase 1 building will be tucked behind the Village Market Building. The Phase II building will be built at the corner of Maskoma Street and Water Street.
The third and final phase, described in the narrative alongside submissions to the council as a “more long-term redevelopment plan,” will replace the Village Market Building – currently occupied by a tanning salon, video game store, and laundry – with a six-story building The L-shaped contains 21,000 square feet of retail and dining space on the lower level with 86 housing units totaling 71,000 square feet on the five upper floors.
If the three phases are built, the project will have more than 240 housing units.
Sidor said the redevelopment proposal is designed to align with Lebanon’s “Master Plan and Concept Study” which calls for the concentration of new residential housing in high-density areas of the city.
“We see this particular plot as an ideal location for this goal,” Sidor told the board of directors, which “will really help revitalize Central Lebanon.” He said via email that the three-building project would be the largest Execusuite undertaken to date.
Architect Wasser said the first building to be erected across from the former village market building “would be easier to erect at this point in time” and a second building would follow shortly thereafter.
Phase three will depend largely on how things go in the first two phases and include retail space for what Sidore described as a “community market”, although he hedged by adding “I can’t say it will definitely happen” but that “every effort will be made” Possible” in order to “return the market here to the city center.”
“Our primary drive is to increase density and activity to a walkable downtown. In order to add a grocery store and restaurant, we need that density,” Sidor said via email on Tuesday.
About 80% of the units will be studios and 20% one-bedroom, he said, with rental rates of about $3.50 per square foot.
Initial renderings show studio apartments will be around 433 square feet, and one-bedroom units will be around 929 square feet.
Sidor said the first phase, which is the smallest, is estimated to cost about $12 million.
He said the first and second phases will take about two years, “excluding any unforeseen circumstances.”
During the nearly 30-minute presentation to the board of directors on December 13, Sidor and Wasser emphasized that the model of what Execusuite wants to do at the Village Market in Lebanon is backed by what the company has designed and built in the 69-unit complex in the south. Main Street in White River Junction and, earlier, they converted the former Lebanon Preparatory High School building on Bank Street into 43 rental units.
“We’ve demonstrated at White River Junction that we can create great buildings downtown that work really well in the fabric of the city,” said Wasser, whose firm Studio Nexus also designed the recently completed South Main Street apartment complex at Davidson at White River Junction and Projects. Other Execusite.
At the same time, the comparison to the South Main Street project prompted an obvious challenge from a longtime planning board member, who wanted to see if Execusuite was doing more than just importing a formula from across the river.
Describing the building designs as “really amazing,” board member Joanne Munro commented, “I don’t see central Lebanon at all” and noted that the design “exactly looks like” the South Main Street project and asked, “How does this complement the character of existing Lebanon”?
Wasser responded that the bricks on the facade and window details would reflect the style and color of the buildings around Colborne Park.
But he also noted that cost and material considerations also influence and that it would not be possible to recreate architecture from another century.
“We will not be able to recreate the buildings located in the city center,” he said. “Modern technology has taken us further.” “But it is not cost-effective to create these kinds of buildings anymore. So we will have to reinterpret these in a more modern way.”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
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