A two-year fight over new housing on Court Street in Dover is over, and it ended with a twist: the neighbors who spent years opposing the project wound up selling their own home to the developer. The Dover Planning Board has now approved a merged, 10-home development spanning 103 and 91 Court Street, closing out a saga that moved from city hearings to a state appeals board.
The project's roots trace back to late 2024, when developer Robert Baldwin, operating as 5 Sherman St. LLC, first pitched a nine-unit plan for 103 Court Street. According to Foster's Daily Democrat, the Dover Planning Board approved a five-unit site review for 103 Court Street at its March 10, 2026 meeting, after continuing the item from January 27, 2026. The project only grew back to its original ambitions after Baldwin later acquired the neighboring lot at 91 Court Street, allowing the two properties to merge into a single, larger development, a shift detailed in a city planning update.
Hamer and Mason did not accept the five-unit approval quietly. The Registry Review reports that they appealed the Planning Board's decision to the New Hampshire Housing Appeals Board, which rejected their claim and ordered them to pay a portion of the city's legal fees. The Housing Appeals Board rejected their challenge.
From Courtroom Foes to Sellers
From Courtroom Foes to Sellers The dispute took a striking turn: on July 2, Hamer and Mason closed on the sale of their 91 Court Street home to Baldwin for $725,000, the same source notes. That transaction handed the developer the second lot he needed to merge the properties and expand the project back toward its original density, adding four cottage homes to each of the two sites for a total of 10 homes on land where just two houses currently stand.
With both parcels now under his control, Baldwin's merged 10-home proposal received approval. Dover's TDR program, created under New Hampshire RSA 674:21, lets developers purchase extra residential building credits, with the fees funneled into the city's Conservation Fund to buy public land easements, according to the City of Dover. Two homes in the five-unit 103 Court Street plan were restricted to 1,400 square feet of living area or less.
The Merged 10-Home Plan
The merged proposal combines the two Court Street properties in a 10-home development.
The Court Street case didn't unfold in a vacuum. Dover has been debating denser infill housing.
Citywide TDR Rules Under Review
The density fight over Court Street arrived amid a broader reckoning over how Dover handles Transfer of Development Rights citywide. The Planning Board formed a TDR Subcommittee in February 2025 after community debate over density incentives intensified, and proposed zoning amendments went before the public at hearings on September 8 and September 22, according to notices posted by the City of Dover. Those citywide revisions remain a separate process from the Court Street approval, but they reflect the same tension that defined the two-year fight: how much density to allow near the city center, and who gets to decide.
