Londonderry News

Concept Plan meets reality!

The May 15th to 17th Londonderry Business Park Design Charrette in 2003 included a Western Sector Concept Plan that included 700 acres. Once mitigation is completed for the airport access road this area alone will still have between 400 and 500 acres available for development.

Concept plan from the 2003 Design Charrette

At the core of this development is the relocation and improvements to the Pettingill Road presently serving only a small portion of this area today. Dead heading near the end of Runway 35 a small gate blocks a dusty roadway leading to what could be the home of a Convention Center, Educational Facilities, Manufacturing, Warehousing, Mixed Use Villages, and First Class Office Parks.

In the Design Charrette a key issue was “The Location of Pettingill Road”

The location of Pettingill Road is a key issue in this area. Its placement dictates the location of many of the other elements that will follow. In its current, now defunct, location it follows a sandy path westerly from Harvey Road to the Manchester city line, where it formerly connected with local streets. As currently envisioned, Pettingill Road is to be the major east-west connector between Harvey Road and the Airport Access Road.

The design team recommends that the western end of Pettingill Road be moved southerly some 350 feet from its former location, so as to intersect with the Airport Access Road opposite the proposed connector to NH Route 3A.

Relocating the western end of Pettingill Road will both move the roadway further away from Little Cohas Brook and provide a more useful development site on the north side of Pettingill Road, as it intersects with the Airport Access Road.

The design team further recommends that Pettingill Road be developed as a limited access
boulevard. In fact, it recommends this design standard for the entire road network linking the Airport Access Road to NH Route 28 and Interstate 93.

This roadway will be a major arterial. Estimates are that the Airport and the business activity surrounding it will generate some 40,000 vehicle trips per day. It is assumed that those trips will divide roughly half coming to and from the east, and half coming to and from the west. The design team feels that a four lane divided highway, attractively landscaped and with modest paved shoulders could both handle this volume of traffic and meet the design recommendations of the public. In this area, the team envisioned major intersections at Harvey Road, at Industrial Drive, at the Airport Access Road, and one new one between the latter two. Access to all abutting lots would be through these collector road intersections, not from the boulevard itself.

North of Pettingill Road, the design team recommends siting a major convention center at the intersection with the Access Road. The balance of the land would become surface parking for car rental agencies, and infill development around the Airport.

South of Pettingill Road, the design team recommends a major mixed use development, with space for a corporate office park, an educational facility, industrial and manufacturing activity, warehousing/freight forwarding facilities, and sufficient retail to support the daily needs of the 5000 employees who might work here. It sees the potential for housing only in the extreme southerly section, perhaps as an extension of some of the Litchfield Road developments.

Such an approach, the design team believes, respects both the absolute constraints of the mitigation areas, and the general direction of the public. It creates a large, but not necessarily intense, mixed use development.

This May 20, 2008 plan prepared by Stantec Consulting for a Regional Executive luncheon hosted by the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport Authority to stimulate interest and Economic Growth in the region. Click for a larger version.

What could be home to 3.6 million square feet of development this area is clearly a future asset to Londonderry, greater Manchester and the entire Southern New Hampshire region.

For more information on this spectacular area open for development read;

“Manchester-Boston Regional Airport Access Road starts to soar”

“Londonderry Convention Center”

Also use our custom search engine to search all Londonderry, New Hampshire private and public sites.

Images courtesy Town of Londonderry.