Condos on Mt Monadnock

By Donna Moxley on Thursday, February 17, 2005.

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A New Hampshire developer has big plans for Mount Monadnock.

He wants to build 40 condominiums on the mountain and the plan has local residents worried.

The Keene Sentinel's Donna Moxley reports ...

Develper Robert Van Dyke would like to build 40 upscale condos at the rate of about 10 per year.

The condos would range from fifteen hundred to twenty four hundred square feet.

And they'd cost between three hundred and four hundred thousand dollars.

All of it would sit on 29 acres.

Royce: "I think 40 condos is completely out of the spirit or the idea of the mountain zone."

That's Charlie Royce.

The former State Representative lives about a half mile from the planned development.

The mountain zone he mentions was set up back in the 1990s to protect MT. Monadnock from development.

The zone spans four towns, Jaffrey, Dublin, Marlborough and Troy, each of which created its own portion of what's called the overlay zone.

But Van Dyke's proposal would affect only Jaffrey's portion.

The builder himself did not return repeated phone calls for this story.

But his engineers have said the buildings would barely be visible from Monadnock.

And they say they have the advantage of planning the project on land already approved for a large condominium complex back before the overlay zone was created.

That project went bust in its early stages, but Van Dyke hopes to move forward with his own version on the property.

Local resident Royce has another connection to the aread.

He was the manager of Monadnock State Park for 10 years,

Monadnock is one of the most hiked mountains in the country and Royce says the overlay zone was meant to protect that resource.

Royce: "It's aesthetic, it's environmental, it's for tourism, we estimate approximately 100,000 people come to hike on Monadnock, a lot of people interested in the mountain ... the idea was to preserve and protect, and I remember the discussion at the time in 1991, we were seeing the megalopolis moving toward us... and Monadnock and the mountains and its environs would probably be an oasis in the middle of a lot of people."

Jaffrey's zoning board has granted Van Dyke permission to build, but the conservation commission has sued the zoning board over that decision.

The town attorney is trying to sort out the legal details, and the planning board will continue to discuss the application at its next meeting on Tuesday.

For NHPR News, this is Donna Moxley.