Developer applies to build 90-unit apt. complex

LACONIA — Plans for a 90-unit apartment complex in the South End of the city are on track to go before the Planning Board early next year.

Brian Gilbert has filed an application to appear before the Planning Board to present a proposal to build a three-building complex on 9.2 acres off Province Street close to the Laconia Bypass.

The project, which received a variance from the city’s Zoning Board last January, would be the first major affordable apartment complex to be built in the city in several years.

Plans associated with the development, to be called the Villages at Province Street, will be reviewed this month and again in January by the city’s Technical Review Committee, a panel comprised of representatives from the Public Works Department, Planning and Code Enforcement, Water, Fire, Assessing and Police. Planning Director Dean Trefethen said the plan could go before the Planning Board at its February meeting.

Trefethen said his office is exploring the possibility of a secondary access to the project via Growtth Road in the Lakes Business Park which lies behind this proposed development. He said the office would also be looking at the impact on traffic at the intersections of Province Street and Route 107, and Province Street and South Main Street.

In the application, Gilbert states the project will provide market rate apartments.

“This is not a low-income project. It will be affordable for well-paid professionals and factory workers,” Attorney Philip Brouillard, Gilbert’s agent, told the ZBA earlier this year.

In approving the variance, some members of the ZBA commented that the project would provide moderate-priced housing which is in short supply in the city.

However, some South End residents worried that the apartments would bring additional traffic and more crime to their residential area.

The variance which Gilbert obtained allows for the construction of a larger number of apartments. Without the variance only 60 units could have been built on the land under the criteria contained in the city’s zoning ordinance, which permits six apartments per acre in that zone.

The project would be built on the site of a one-time gravel pit.