Commitment to the Environment

Our commitment to the environment began long before the first earth was moved. Dartmouth Crossing was designed with environmental stewardship and sustainability as core planning principles. As a result, two brooks on the property have been restored.

Years of blasting had created an environment where the stream beds of Grassy and Frenchman’s Brooks were higher than the surrounding ground. This meant they had to be built up so that rainwater would once again seep into the brooks and keep the water level high. The bedrock had been fractured by the blasting and that too had an effect on where water flowed. Blasting and other unnatural occurrences through the years also meant that the two brooks, Frenchman’s and Grassy, were no longer habitats for trout.

The land around both of these brooks has been rescued and trout are now spawning in ponds that have been created in Dartmouth Crossing. Click here to view photos.

Dartmouth Crossing is also taking an innovative approach to handling rainwater.

Plans are becoming reality to take rainwater that runs off the roofs of the buildings in The Shops at Dartmouth Crossing and run it over concrete pads where it will be aerated, and then channeled into wetlands and, eventually, into Grassy Brook.

The end result will be “Fish Park”, a park located beside the Augusta Bridge at the heart of Dartmouth Crossing. The park will have a spawning bed for trout and an amphitheatre for performances – so named because visitors looking over the Fish Park site from the bridge will see that it has actually been designed in the shape of a fish.

Click here to download the schematic concept for Fish Park (pdf).