The planning effort for the Lyme Road South precinct now has its own project page and has a serious team behind it:

Project Manager: Joanna Whitcomb
Planner/Architect: Beyer Blinder Belle
Landscape Architect: Michael Van Volkenburgh Associates
Environmental Design Consultant: Atelier Ten

The planners have sent out a Dear Neighbors newsletter (pdf) letting the neighbors know that a dormitory cluster — a group of “apartment-style” residences for 300 students, presumably seniors — is planned for their area.

Included in the college’s report of last Thursday’s community meeting is a map showing the site of the proposed cluster. The site is south of or upon Garipay Fields, southwest of the Rugby Club and presumably encompassing the driving range of the old HCC Practice Area:

That site is much further away from campus than, say, the Dewey Field Parking Lot, itself a barely acceptable site for a remote new dorm.

Google Maps says it takes 20 minutes to walk from Baker Library to the driving range south of Garipay Fields.

The proposed dorms will be used as swing space during a period of at least 10 years as existing dormitories on campus are renovated. After those renovations are complete, one hopes that the college will turn over the apartments to graduate students rather than expanding undergraduate enrollment to fit the available housing. Perhaps that ability (and commitment?) to abandon the dorm after its use by undergrads is the only thing that could make the plan acceptable.

Taking a piecemeal approach to the expansion of existing dorms (mentioned in this post) would certainly be better for the campus than erecting a distant, school-bus dependent cluster on Lyme Road. Even building a single 300-bed swing space cluster at the corner of Maynard and Rope Ferry would seem far superior to the Lyme Road idea. Once the 10-year renovation project is completed, that swing space can become a combination of offices and graduate student housing — just as Chase and Woodbury Halls at Tuck and 37 Dewey Field Road were all converted from housing to offices. (And whatever happened to the “swing space” dorm proposed for Crosby Street? Wouldn’t it obviate the need for the Lyme Road project?)

It seems that folks are in a hurry, and a grassy, vacant site allows for hastier construction.

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Update 01.24.2022: The Valley News has an article on neighborhood opposition.