From:	Karen Edwards
Sent:	Thursday, November 30, 2017 8:23 AM
To:	Karen Edwards
Subject:	FW: Comments on the Proposal for Mill Plaza



From: John Mince []  
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 8:19 PM 
To: Karen Edwards 
Subject: Comments on the Proposal for Mill Plaza

Dear Town Planning Board, Durham, NH:

It is with sadness that I view the latest in the series of plans for the Mill Plaza.  This plan 
does away with all of the the advances the team had made along the way.

What was slowly becoming closer and closer to an acceptable plan for renewing and 
rebuilding the Mill Plaza
now seems to be a statement of scorn for the Town Board and the people of Durham.

What possible motive could there be but to wrench us into having to accept the 
previous, and more acceptable,
plan.   This current submission is clearly an act of dismissal.  A dismissal of our very 
real concerns.  A dismissal of the work we have put into helping the planners come up 
with a valuable plan that all would accept and enjoy.

My wife and I are abutters at 23 Faculty Road.   We would be proximate to any building 
that goes on and any noise, smells, debris, that will emanate from the Mill Plaza and all 
its activities.   From the looks of this last proposal it seems that the planners are trying 
to make sure we get the most toxic forms of noise, debris, and odors.   If allowed to 
pass and to eventually be realized at the Mill Plaza, this plan will significantly lower the 
value of our property on Faculty Road.  We have only lived here for seven 
years.  Clearly if we had seen this proposal carried out seven years ago, we wouldn't 
have given Faculty Road another glance.  We would have purchased our home 
elsewhere. 

The last proposal correctly recognized that we need the student housing to be 
aggregated toward the north end of the  plaza.  Now we see that in this current 
proposal, they slid the student housing back down to the southern end.  Why?  What 
happened in the intervening period for them to make such a move?   We all stood and 
admired that they placed more students at the site of the current Rite Aid building in the 
last proposal.  We were all for that, and hoped they could find a way to continue this 
good idea, getting the students moved closer to Main Street and away from the Faculty 
Road abutters.

 
Please, as members of the Town Planning Board, kindly do whatever you can to halt 
this proposal in its tracks.  If this is their ploy to get us to accept a previous plan, let's 
actually talk about that, and see if we can get some of the requests the citizens had 
actually requested.  Things were moving in the right direction with their last plan.  I even 
spoke up at the mike of having a celebration when this was all settled.   

We thank you, in advance, for all the work you are doing, and have done, to help this 
Mill Plaza redevelopment be one that will be appreciated by all the citizens of Durham 
for the decades that will follow.  Whatever happens here, we will all be living with it for a 
very long time indeed.  Let us make sure it is what we all can genuinely envision as 
satisfying, creative, and effective for our lives here in Durham, a wonderful place to live.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
John A. Mince
11/26/17