Smart Growth with Lyme Properties
On Saturday, June 10th the Friends of River Park and the Lebanon Opera House are hosting a Hootenanny @ River Park along the Connecticut River at River Park West Lebanon, featuring performances by Beecharmer, Cold Chocolate, and The Jacob Joliff Band.
This free, family-friendly celebration of roots music and the great outdoors starts at 4pm and runs until dusk. Enjoy the trails at River Park and then settle in with your eco-friendly picnic (pack it in/pack it out and no alcohol or glass, please) as three incredible bands perform on a pop-up stage nestled among shade trees overlooking the river and the Wilder Dam.
River Park West Lebanon is community-conscious real estate project along the banks of the Connecticut River under development by West Leb-based and GOA-member Lyme Properties. Chet Clem is President of Lyme Properties, and joined the GOA Board of Directors in 2022 given Lyme’s commitment to economic development as a tool for improving the NH outdoors. We chatted with Chet to learn more about the Hootenanny, the River Park development, and broader West Lebanon revitalization and West Lebanon Greenway efforts:
How did the Hootenanny come to happen at River Park?
We’re huge fans of the Lebanon Opera House, and what Executive Director Joe Clifford has done to expand their offerings through outdoor events like the NEXUS Festival in downtown Lebanon. We’ve been chatting and scheming for a few years, and when the LOH on Location series idea came up we jumped at the chance to be the first host. In many ways, it’s exactly the kind of community event we’ve always wanted to have happen at River Park, and as a private property owner we can move more quickly and be more flexible than the City in bringing events like this to the West Lebanon side of town. It's our hope that this Hootenanny is the start of an annual collaboration between the River Park and Lebanon Opera House, and another way to showcase the public access, recreation, and waterfront opportunities in West Lebanon.
How does a huge real estate development project align with conservation, community, and recreation?
I think it’s a reasonable reaction and common misconception that development and conservation are inherently opposing forces. GOA does a great job of connecting the dots between the outdoor industry and economic development, but no doubt the real estate industry isn’t always top-of-mind for folks when talking about benefits to the great outdoors!
But there are a lot of great examples out there that show how smart growth can actually be net-positive to community, conservation and recreation goals. My father’s work with Lyme Properties in Cambridge’s Kendall Square saw the first privately-financed LEED Platinum building in the United States, as well as the creation of significant public amenities (public green space, skating rink, Charles River canoe & kayak launch) that helped transform a Brownfield site into what is now called the Canal District at Kendall Square. River Park was conceptualized from that experience and adapted to both the property itself and the surrounding Upper Valley community.
The 38-acre River Park parcel used to be an auto body jobbers site and de facto junkyard, we hauled off more pounds of scrap metal than we could count after buying the property back in 2007. By working with our neighbors and the community we developed a plan that would bring “Mixed-use, smart growth, and public access to the Connecticut River. Instead of a field of abandoned cars, or a gated residential community of 120+ cookie-cutter homes that could have been done as-of-right, we created a plan for significant density that would in-turn provide great community benefits– both directly in terms of public access and events like the Hootenanny, and significant tax revenue to the City that could help fund long-standing community improvements and the broader revitalization of West Lebanon.
How the project can be a catalyst for collaborative change in West Leb and beyond?
West Lebanon Greenway c/o Lyme Properties
We want River Park to be a modern addition to the historic downtown of West Lebanon, and one of the best ways to tie those together is through the West Lebanon Greenway. This stems from a long-standing plan that predates the River Park effort, envisioned by the Lebanon Rotary Club and others to create a ‘string of pearls’ of green spaces connected by trail. We saw the opportunity for River Park to play a keystone role in that by providing ½-mile of publicly accessible river frontage and trails on-site, but also as a way to push for bigger changes beyond our boundaries.
The Greenway is one piece of the broader New England Rail-Trail Network championed by the Rails to Trails Conservancy, which is a member of the growing coalition here in West Leb. The Northern Rail Trail and Mascoma River Greenway connect from Concord to Lebanon by multi-modal trail, but then there’s a big gap from the MRG until the Lamoille Trail up in St. Johnsbury. Each segment has its own challenges, but we’ve helped chart the path (pun intended) and are working with others (including the National Park Service, Upper Valley Trails Alliance, the City of Lebanon Rec Department, and more) in making progress while other land control issues are worked through.
River Park is a “trail-and-transit oriented development,” meaning we’ve prioritized community goals of trails (both on-site at River Park, and making future connections to adjacent conservation areas) and public transportation. We have long-standing plans to incorporate an Advance Transit 4-line-hub at the project, solving a bottleneck for our local transit provider and providing free-ride access to our commercial and residential buildings, as well as equitable public access to the trails and outdoors.
While that all comes together, pop-up events like the Hootenanny and the Trails + Trucks food truck events we hosted during Covid, help us connect with the community and continue to educate and inform about broader efforts to build a bright, green future for West Leb.