Dartmouth College has broken ground on a 300-unit apartment complex in Lebanon that it hopes will ease a housing crunch in the area that has affected its own employees and graduate students.

North Branch Construction of Concord has begun sitework at the 401 Mt. Support Road property in Lebanon, for construction of what will eventually be four apartment buildings, a clubhouse and an operations building. The project is being developed for Dartmouth by Michaels Student Living LLC of Camden, N.J. The project will be designed, permitted, constructed, owned and managed by the developer, Michaels Student Living, with a longterm ground lease from Dartmouth.

Portsmouth architecture firm JSA Design of Portsmouth is designer of the project, and Vanasse Hangen Brustlin of Bedford is the civil and landscape engineer.

Phase 1 of the project involves construction of a four-story apartment building and a four-and-a-half-story building with a total of 316 beds in 157 various-sized apartment units. The project is expected to be completed by fall 2022.

Phase 2 will include construction of the remaining two four-story apartment buildings, providing a total of 326 beds in 152 apartment units of various sizes and an operations building that will provide office space for the development’s operations manager, as well as a work area and storage space for the facility’s maintenance team.

Under the agreement with Dartmouth, the college has exclusive rental for Dartmouth graduate students through May of each year. After that, any available units can be marketed to non-Dartmouth graduate students. The project is slated to open in August 2022.