From:	Michael Behrendt
Sent:	Monday, February 08, 2016 1:44 PM
Subject:	Mill Plaza - email from J. Haines

To the Planning Board,
Please see the email below from Julie Haines.

Michael Behrendt
Durham Town Planner
Town of Durham
8 Newmarket Road
Durham, NH  03824
(603) 868-8064
www.ci.durham.nh.us


From: Julie Haines []  
Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2016 1:42 PM 
To: Michael Behrendt 
Subject: Hundreds of Students at our Gateway

Dear Michael, 
 
Thank you to you and the Planning Board for considering this letter in advance of 
the discussion of proposals for adding what will almost certainly be student 
housing at the rear of the Mill Road Plaza near the Chesley Marsh path into our 
family neighborhood. That area is a fragile and important buffer that protects our 
neighborhood from the commercial core and from concentrations of university 
students. Placing a large number of students at the entrance to our neighborhood 
will certainly negatively impact the entire Faculty Neighborhood.  
 
My young Middle School kids, along with many of their peers, walk to school on 
the path through the woods from Faculty Road to the Chesley pedestrian entrance 
to the Mill Road Plaza. That path is heavily used by neighborhood adults as well. 
It's one of the great features that attracted us to buying a house nearby. Placing 
hundreds of students at the edge of our neighborhood and in the vicinity of our 
children and our one wooded path is potentially dangerous and certainly damaging 
to the quality of life in the neighborhood. Students living close to that area will 
likely be tempted to wander into our small wooded area (and the wooden bridge 
over College Brook) for consumption of alcohol and other drugs and general 
activities and behaviors not consistent with the environment we want for our 
children or ourselves.  
 
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see the negative impact a mass of 
student housing in that location would have on the young kids and their families 
directly nearby. Student housing there will increase noise into the neighborhood, 
trash into the neighborhood, odors, light pollution for the neighborhood, and 
diminish our quality of life, particularly on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. 
Student parties in Durham do have a history of becoming wholly out-of-bounds. 
Why on earth would the Town want to damage the quality of life and property 
values of the prime downtown neighborhood with such a move? 
 
It is also not hard to see the delicate balance that neighborhoods such as ours have 
taken time to achieve between university needs and family needs, a balance which 
this proposal would be harming by introducing new dissonance rather than 
respecting our hard-won harmony.  
 
Please respect the existing balance rather than invite problems. 
 
Thanks again for considering our concerns. 
 
Best wishes,  
Julie Haines  
42 Oyster River Road, Durham 
 
Sent from my iPhone