Developers present 38‑site manufactured-home park; residents raise water, traffic and blasting concerns

TF Moran senior project manager Alan Roscoe presented a design-review plan for an 87-acre development on Route 140 that the applicant says will include 38 home sites, 37 manufactured-home sites and one conventional single-family site for the owner-operator.

"These are not mobile homes they will not be on trailers or wheels these will be appearing as if they're stick built on-site on a concrete slab," Roscoe told the planning board, describing 52-by-26-foot homes on 10,000-square-foot lots and a privately owned road network the plan proposes to build with 24-foot paved travel lanes.

Roscoe said the project includes roughly 2,700 linear feet of internal roadways (a 1,725-foot dead-end spur, shorter than the town maximum of 2,500 feet), paved driveways with two parking spaces per lot, on-site propane, one or more community wells and an on-site public water system with storage tank and redundancy, a dry hydrant or cistern for fire protection, and shared septic systems serving groups of lots. A detention basin is proposed near the Route 140 entrance to collect, treat and control runoff.

The application had previously received zoning approvals: a special exception and variance granted by the Zoning Board of Adjustment in 2024 and affirmed May 1, 2025, the applicant said. The developer said the design was revised after expanded wetland mapping and site soil testing reduced the developable area and led to two fewer home sites than the original application.

Public commenters — many of whom live on Dudley Road, Tibbetts Road and nearby neighborhoods — pressed the applicant on public-safety and infrastructure impacts. Key community concerns included well water availability and quality, septic capacity, the effect of new wells on existing domestic wells, blasting and construction noise, roadway sight distance and access-permit status with the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT), and long-term maintenance for walking trails and private roads.

Several residents asked whether DES or the town would monitor existing private wells during applicant testing. Roscoe replied the applicant will do pump tests and recovery tests as required and the planned public-water system would be state-regulated. Town Administrator Ryan Heath later clarified DES oversight: "The public water system that the developer is gonna be required to put in is going to be continually, annually, quarterly monitored, and all has to be run through DES," Heath told the board, noting that a public system (serving more than 15 connections or 25 people for 60 days) triggers state oversight.

Abutters described earlier flooding and washouts on nearby roadways and said they want engineering details for stormwater and culvert work. One commenter identified the project site as having a former landfill or solid-waste leachate at Hidden Springs Road and asked whether brownfields assessment or cleanup funding would be pursued if contaminated soils were found; LRPC staff present said towns can apply for EPA brownfields assessment and cleanup grants when a site has a public use plan and municipal involvement.

Roscoe said DOT driveway approval is pending and that the applicant has provided additional materials to NHDOT; he said the decision "probably won't come until after we finish our local process" and that the driveway permit process had queries outstanding with DOT. Several residents demanded clarity on the DOT process and timeline; one said he had been told DOT had outstanding queries to the applicant for months.

Board members and staff clarified review authority and process: the project is before the planning board for subdivision/design review, not site-plan review (town regulations require site-plan approval only for nonresidential uses and multifamily units), and the board will continue with design-review comments and conditions; no final subdivision approval was taken at the May 20 meeting.

The planning board did not vote to approve the project on May 20. Instead the presentation served as design review and an opportunity for abutters to raise concerns; planning board members asked the applicant for more detailed engineering, drainage, well testing and utility plans and confirmed that NHDOT approval for the Route 140 access will be required before final approvals.

Ending: The planning board left the public hearing open for further review and asked the applicant to supply full-size engineering drawings, DOT correspondence, well test results, stormwater modeling and a written maintenance plan for private roads and common facilities before returning for final action.