Shingle Place Hill: A Development That Manchester Doesn’t Need

To the Editor,

Some projects become symbols of progress.  Others become symbols of shortsightedness. The proposed development at Shingle Place Hill risks becoming the latter.

Manchester is not simply another town with vacant land waiting to be monetized.  It is a place defined by its landscape, its history, and the careful balance between growth and preservation that generations have worked to protect.  Once that balance is lost, it cannot simply be bought back.

Developments of this scale often arrive wrapped in the language of “housing opportunities,” “smart growth,” or “meeting demand.”  Those goals can be worthwhile.  But not every location is appropriate simply because it can be developed.  Good planning requires judgment, restraint, and respect for the character of a community.

Shingle Place Hill is the wrong place.

Replacing open landscapes with dense construction permanently alters the very qualities that make Manchester unique.  Roads become busier.  Infrastructure becomes strained. Wildlife habitat is fragmented.  Scenic views disappear.  Stormwater runoff increases.  The cumulative effect is not measured only in traffic counts or engineering reports—it is measured in the gradual erosion of a town’s identity.

Perhaps most disappointing is the apparent willingness to treat irreplaceable land as just another financial opportunity.  There is a profound difference between creating value and extracting it.  Once mature landscapes are bulldozed, historic rural character is suburbanized, and natural spaces are lost, no amount of landscaping or architectural embellishment can restore what has been destroyed.

The people advancing this project should ask themselves a simple question: Will future generations thank us for this decision?

If the honest answer is no, then the project deserves to be reconsidered.

Leadership is not about maximizing every development opportunity.  It is about knowing when restraint serves the public better than profit.  Communities depend upon leaders who understand that stewardship sometimes means leaving remarkable places largely untouched.

Those with the authority to move this proposal forward should reflect carefully on the legacy they wish to leave.  Every planning decision becomes part of the town’s history. Some decisions preserve what makes a place extraordinary.  Others become examples of opportunities squandered.

Manchester deserves development that respects its landscape rather than overwhelms it, that complements its heritage rather than competes with it, and that demonstrates genuine civic responsibility instead of treating the town’s most valuable assets as commodities.

The measure of a community is not how much it builds, but how wisely it chooses what should never be lost.

Sargent M. McCormick Collier 

Essex