Board chairman Stephen Mandel’s January 13th letter to the Dartmouth community mentions so many new spaces going into the renovated Inn that the building’s envelope surely must be expanding:

In addition, the “front door” to the College, the Hanover Inn, is planned to undergo a complete renovation beginning this summer. Every aspect of the inn will be touched and will result in a larger number of guest rooms, all updated, new and relocated restaurants, and modern conference facilities. The College remains the owner of the inn but we have hired a third party to manage the inn. The renovation will be funded with mortgage debt and the proceeds of the sale of the Minary Conference Center in Holderness, N.H.

The idea of having a standard conference center near Hanover has been mentioned in past master plans:

Finally, the College is exploring the feasibility of a regional conference center to further enable the dissemination of scholarship.

Lo-Yi Chan, et al., Dartmouth College Master Plan (2002), 10 (11.3mb pdf).

A conventional conference center could probably be a moneymaker, but it is hard to see how could fit on the corner of Wheelock and Main.