Manchester Sand and Gravel hopes to get final approval on Hooksett’s Head’s Pond development in the first half of 2008, according to their attorney.

A public hearing before the Hooksett Planning Board on Monday, Jan. 28, at 7 p.m., at the public library will recap the project in its entirety and delineate plans for going forward.

The proposed development has been in the works since the early 1990s in a designated multi-use district surrounding Head’s Pond, Town Pond and The Great Marsh. It borders Allenstown at Bear Brook State Park.

The plans include a major shopping development, several pods of housing developments, a three-acre town common, a 102-foot wide parkway running through the center of the development from Route 28 down to I-93, about 200 acres of town property, and about 150 acres of open space.

Manchester Sand and Gravel attorney David Campbell said the company is also working with the Audubon Center in Auburn to preserve a bird sanctuary.

A 170-acre golf course was dropped from the plans this spring after the Planning Board voted that another access road between the developments and Route 3 should be added to the plans. The elimination of the golf course freed up more public open space.

Phase 1 of the project is already half complete with the construction of Carriage Hill single- family homes which began in April 2004. A little over half of those homes are sold, Campbell said.

Carriage Manor, a cluster of town houses that comprises the second part of Phase 1, gained Planning Board approval in February and is currently under construction.

When finished, in about 10 years according to Campbell, the project will have 428 homes, about a quarter of them townhouses and the rest single-family homes.

Open space will account for 72 percent of the entire 1,267- acre district and 28 percent will be developed, Campbell said.

Campbell said the development is meant as a traditional village center, particularly the proposed town park, which was modeled after those in Milford, Hopkinton and other towns.

“There will be nothing else like it in New Hampshire,” Campbell said, adding that a town beach with a boat launch is in the plans for the Town Pond waterfront.

He said Manchester Sand and Gravel has been working with the town on the project, calling it a collaborative effort.

In 1993, voters designated 50 water bodies in the town as prime wetlands classification, including the four major wetlands in the development’s area: Head’s Pond, the Town Pond, the Great Marsh and another wetland.

In 2002, those four bodies were put into the Wetlands of Special Concern category with the passage of Warrant Article 18 by about 58 percent.

An abutter’s petition for a two-thirds vote on the wetlands article was found not legally binding after a three-year court battle due to a lack of verifiable signatures, and the voters’ decision stuck.

*** Marshall, who has spent decades on the town’s Planning Board, dealt with the Head’s Pond development since its first plans were explored.

“When the development came up, some of those wetlands were going to be infringed upon,” Marshall said of Manchester Sand and Gravel’s initial plans for the district.

He added that the community’s attitude toward the Head’s Pond development has not been directly negative, but residents have shown concern for the increasing amount of housing developments in town over the years.

“It’s not so much this development. The community feels that there’s too much housing going in,” said Marshall.

The board has been working on a good growth management ordinance to control some of that growth, Marshall said, which could take a few years to develop.

After the Jan. 28 hearing, Marshall said, the board will begin to lay out the phases for development.