Image courtesy of Green & Company

Exeter town officials have given developer Green & Company a green light to redevelop a retail property near the city’s hospital into housing. 

The company proposes to replace a Federated Auto Parts store at 76 Portsmouth Ave. and wooded land behind it with 32 townhouses and a 4-story mixed apartment-and-retail building. 

The town Planning Board voted 4-2 in late March to approve the project’s site plan. 

Plans filed with the town show that Green & Company wants to build the townhouses first, on a triangular wooded parcel behind Portsmouth Avenue’s retail strip, followed by the 36-unit multifamily building at a later date, once Federated Auto Parts’ lease runs out.  

To accommodate that lease and an optional five-year extension, town officials gave Green & Company 10 years to break ground on the mixed-use building. 

If built, that building would have nearly 4,500 square feet of commercial space on its ground floor, with a rendering filed along wit Green & Company’s plans showing four storefronts. 

The plan approved in March is much smaller than the 121-unit proposal Green & Company proposed last year, to much opposition from neighbors. Both proposals took advantage of town voters’ overwhelming vote to extend mixed-use zoning up Portsmouth Avenue.