Search

LEGISLATIVE YEAR 2020

ORDINANCE: O-20-007
PURPOSE: Removing the handicapped parking space in front of 7-9
Lemon Street

ENDORSER(S): Alderman Patricia Klee

COMMITTEE

ASSIGNMENT: Committee on Infrastructure

FISCAL NOTE: Materials, labor, and vehicle overhead: $55.00
ANALYSIS

This legislation removes the one handicapped parking space in front of 7-9 Lemon Street.

Approved as to form: Office of Corporation Counsel

By: Vopnt Lar Mee

Date: 5 Fea TodO

A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Thursday, February 6, 2020, at 7:05 p.m. at Nashua
High School North, Room B166.

President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan K. Lovering recorded.

Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan K. Lovering; Alderman-at-Large Ben Clemons led in the Pledge to
the Flag.

President Wilshire

Before | ask the Clerk to call the roll, just | want to thank you all. You know that the Aldermanic Chamber is
undergoing some renovations and they were kind enough to allow us to use this space this evening. The
thing about these microphones that are different than ours is that you have to actually turn it on when you
speak. So | just wanted to make sure that was clear to everyone. Would the Clerk please call the roll?

The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present. Alderman Lopez was recorded
absent.

Mayor James W. Donchess was also in attendance.
President Wilshire

Alderman Lopez was unable to join us. | will turn the meeting over to the Mayor to give us a little briefing
on this Public Hearing.

Mayor Donchess

Thank you Madam President and thank you for everyone for coming tonight to talk about this Performing
Arts Center Project. | see a couple of my former colleagues here, I'd like to welcome them; it’s great to see
them. So Madam President, | thought what | would do is take a few moments to talk about what this project
is all about and how we’ve gotten here and then turn it over to Tim Cummings, the Director of Economic
Development to give a little more detail and then | think then Deb Novotne who has been involved with the
fund raising is going to address you as well.

So | think the basic question that sometimes people ask is, “why are we doing this project”. And the real
reason is that we are trying to build and we are building a stronger, healthier economy for the City of
Nashua. That is our fundamental goal and that benefits everyone. If we look at some of our neighboring
Cities in New Hampshire, all having Performing Arts Center; | will focus for the moment on Keene,
Manchester and Concord.

Keene is, of course, a much smaller City, a quarter of our size, 50 miles to the west. They have the
advantage of the fact that they have a traditional theatre, The Colonial Theater which was removed some
years ago. But they are now investing a lot more money in expanding it and enhancing it. If you look at
what their objectives are for a theater, now they’ve been operating for some years, they put it on their web
site. They say, “The Colonial Theater is the Monadnock Region’s preeminent Performing Arts Center and a
key component in the economic engine of downtown Keene and the surrounding area”. They have again
operating this theater for a number of years. They go on to say, “when all of these renovations and
enhancements are completed, it will serve an additional 10,000 clients and will bring 60,000 patrons
annually to downtown Keene” and they say, “greatly enhancing the cultural appeal of the Monadnock
Region”.

If you look in Concord, the same thing is happening. There is the Colonial Theater, an older theater that
was renovated some years ago. They’ve had great success with that, in terms of building a stronger
economy, more healthy economy for Concord. They, in the last couple of years, The Colonial Theater

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 2

acquired a smaller theater and renovated that so now they have two performance spaces because they feel
that it has done so much for their downtown.

Same thing in Manchester; in Manchester there is the Palace Theater on Hanover Street. Years ago that
was struggling, it was revived, renovated and a lot of work has been done it. Within the last year or so, the
Palace Theater acquired yet another smaller theater in order to enhance the effect which the Palace has for
the City of Manchester. In Manchester the main Palace Theater brings 140,000 people to Hanover Street
every year, spending millions and millions of dollars in the downtown.

The reason that the theater like this helps to build a more healthy economy is that everything that we are
doing downtown works together to enhance business activity and build a thriving downtown community
which is important to the entire City. We have Paul Shea here from Great American Downtown, he’s done
a great job in bringing in new events, new excitement, new activities, but we are working on the riverfront,
we are going to be enhancing riverfront with walkways and lighting in order to use the riverfront and the
beauty of this natural asset for the benefit of everyone. Also, we have brought 500 units of downtown
housing in the last few years near to Main Street or at least in the downtown area.

Now why do | say that this stronger downtown economy benefits everyone? Because if you look at the
downtown, the small area, a quarter square mile, out of 30 some square miles, so less than 1% of the area
of the City. If you look at the downtown area, the quarter mile that is Main Street and kind of the mill yard,
that area generates $6 million dollars of tax revenue for the entire City, yet requires very few services. |
mean in that downtown area, we don’t even do garage pickup, it’s all commercial. Very few school
children, which is the most expensive of our services and of course we have the typical, the normal Police
and Fire protection. Overall there is no way we spend close to $6 million dollars in the downtown area.

Just in the last few years, these 3 projects that have come in; Riverfront Landing, Loft 34 and the Marshall
Street Apartments, once Marshall Street is fully in the tax base, those three projects will pay $1.3 million
dollars to the City, which is far more than the Performing Arts Center will ever cost in a year for all of the
debt service that is involved. So if we can use all of these projects together, the Performing Arts Center, all
of the activity it will generate to boost the downtown, the amount of downtown business activity raise the
property values and strengthen the economy downtown. It benefits everyone because if that $6 million
dollars becomes $9, becomes $12 million dollars collected from that quarter square mile, it helps us pay for
schools like this one, it helps us pay for Fire and Police services all across the City. And it provides a
cultural experience for our citizens and for those in the region that currently does not exist.

So we are not reinventing the wheel here, this has been a highly successful strategy in communities
smaller than ours. Again Concord is about half the size; Keene is a quarter of the size, very close by. The
project, | think you will learn, is very well thought out. We have a very good operator and some people
have been asking about sort of the progress and the changes that have occurred over time. So | thought |
would take a couple minutes in addition, if you don’t mind, Madam President, to kind of just trace some of
that.

So this particular Performing Arts Center project; this has been looked at for decades in Nashua. But this
particular project began with a feasibility study done by Duncan Webb from New York City. That occurred
over a period of a couple of years. The City guided that project, it started before | was Mayor and | think it
was completed right at the beginning of when | was in office. He guided in the sense that we really asked
him to develop a project that would be a Performing Arts Center or study the feasibility of a Performing Arts
Center that was on the second floor above retail somewhere in the downtown. He looked at the market
and determined that a Performing Arts Center was financially feasible, and suggested that we should have
a theater of about 500 seats. That feasibility study was completed sometime in 2017 or 16, and then the
City moved forward to consider whether we should do the project. There was a vote of the Board of
Aldermen that did not pass, it was very close, but it didn’t pass. Then it went on the ballot and it passed the
voters. Then it was authorized by the Board of Aldermen, | think 2 years ago in February of 2018.

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 3

We had bonding authorization for a project with a feasibility study but no design. In the course of that
feasibility study, the idea was arrived at to do this at Alec’s Shoes which was a very central, main corner in
downtown. So we went about this thoughtfully, methodically, very publicly, the City formed a Steering
Committee of a group of people; some members of the Board of the Aldermen, a lot of members of the
community. All of their meetings have always been public and | think they are on film, | think you can see
them on the City’s web site or YouTube with a link. So if you really want to see everything that has
happened, you can go through the entire history of the Steering Committee which has met many times over
the period of the last couple of years.

The Steering Committee formed a fundraising sub-committee to try to raise money for the project because
back in 2017 when this was voted on, there was a condition placed on it that the City raise outside money
of $4 million dollars. So there needed to be a fundraising committee. But the City had never raised money
in that manner before. So, the fundraising committee and the steering committee recommended that we
engage a professional fundraiser. So they went out with an RFP, a Request for Proposal to decide who to
hire as the fundraiser. After getting I’m not sure how many proposals, because | was not directly involved
in making that choice, but they engaged Betsy McNamara who had successfully conducted a number of
fundraising efforts around New Hampshire but also right here in Nashua for the Soup Kitchen where they
raised some millions of dollars as well as the “Y”. She has done work in Concord and elsewhere in New
Hampshire. She recommended, look — we need to look in more depth to see how much money we can
raise so we need to do a feasibility study as to how much really can be raised realistically in Nashua.

The time was taken to thoroughly look at the issue of how much money could be raised. That feasibility
study regarding the raising of the money was completed sometime in the early fall of 2018 somewhere in
there. She and the feasibility suggested that the City could privately raise $2.5 million dollars, which
became the goal of the fundraising effort. In addition, the City began to explore the possibility of New
Market Tax Credits, which is a Federal Program that has been used successfully around New Hampshire
many times. It’s highly technical but basically you get an allocation of these New Market Tax Credits and
when you do, you can sell those to realize funds to contribute to a publicly oriented project.

We also got a consultant who is an expert in New Market Tax Credits and began to apply to bring in, in
addition to the $2.5 million dollars, an additional $4 million in New Market Tax Credits. In a parallel way,
the Steering Committee began to look at, “well we need to have someone design the project, we’ve got this
concept but there’s no design, we don’t know at all what it would look like exactly”. So in 2018 the Steering
Committee, in addition to all the other things we’ve discussed, put out a request for proposal for architects
to design a Nashua Performing Arts Center. | think about six or maybe more applied, very nationally
recognized architects, New York City, Boston, people who have done this kind of work before, very skilled.
So all of those people were interviewed and they all had proposals, again these are all public meetings and
| think Mr. Teeboom quite a few of them, or all of them. He is very, very diligent. | think he will and
everyone will agree that these were highly qualified people.

At the end of the day, the Steering Committee chose a design team lead by ICON which an architectural
firm in Boston. But one thing that was very persuasive to the Steering Committee that ICON presented and
others on the Steering Committee had made the same point. This thing is not going to be successful if it is
on the second floor and it needs to be bigger than 500 seats. On the second floor it is not good for the
audience, it is not good for the performers, it needs to be on the first floor. So the Steering Committee
following the thoughts of ICON moved the performance space to the first floor. Again the architects and the
design team suggested it should be 750 seats but in addition to that and a lot of this is all happening at the
same time so | apologize for going back and forth in time. But at the same time these other things are
occurring, the City was looking for an operator who could professionally operate a theater in a commercial
way that would be successful for the City. So we wouldn’t have to constantly subsidize it.

The operator who responded and who was located and ultimately engaged was Peter Lally of Spectacle
Management who operates other theaters in New England; Lowell, Lexington, the Cape. He knows the
business of commercial performances and performance centers very well. He made the point that you can
make this work and I, Peter Lally and my company can make this work requiring no subsidy from the City

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 4

whatsoever if you make it 750 seats. So during the process of the design, that’s going on, the fundraising
efforts are sort of being organized. Peter Lally comes in and the Steering Committee elects to go forward
with ICON with a 750 seat theater on the first floor at the Alec’s location.

Now there was also a Fundraising Committee formed, not City people really of private sector actors,
business people and the like who would raise money. But they, in working together with the fundraising
consultant Betsy McNamara, and after doing this feasibility study said, “if you want to try to raise significant
amounts of money to help the Performing Arts Center, you need an actual design. You can’t just have a
concept, you need to show people; if you want someone to give $250,000.00 you've got to show people
what they are contributing to, or $250,000.00 or $500,000.00 or $1,000,000.00 or whatever the number is,
you’ve got show people what they are contributing to.

After ICON was engaged, then they needed to design the Center. So they moved forward to do an actual
design and there were many meetings of the Steering Committee, again Mr. Teeboom was there and |
think was very up on things. That was developed and the design that you see here was not arrived at,
because this whole thing as you can see is a very involved process, was not arrived at until the middle of
2019. It was only then that the fundraising actually began. That’s kind of where we are. | know people
have been, | get it that people are, and | think Mr. Cummings and Ms. Novotny can address this to some
agree, are somewhat frustrated and as am |, that we don’t know how much has been raised. But we know
itis quite a bit already. And we hear from the Fundraising Committee that they want to reach a fairly high
proportion of the total goal before they really announce that they have reached that and kind of go out to
the public for smaller donations.

But we already see that there is quite a bit of momentum behind this. There was $300 and some thousand
for Estate Tax Credit Program; there was $250,000.00 from Bank of America, a bank that really knows —
very engaged across the country who has confidence in this community and in this project. They wouldn’t
put this kind of money into this if it weren’t the case; $250,000.00 last week one of our more local banks
Enterprise bank announced this week $100,000.00 contribution. Every member of the Steering Committee
| believe has made a contribution and a commitment. And there are others that | am sure we will learn
about before too long passes when they reach whatever level they want to reach before they announce that
whatever percentage it is they are through to the goal.

The only other thing that has happened is that the New Market Tax Credit Application was not successful
because the, and | know this gets kind of involved, but since you are all hear, the CDE that we were
working with most carefully did not get an allocation from Treasury. So the way this things works, the way
the New Market Tax Credits work is, the CDE means Community Development Entity, that’s what they are
called under the regulations. Federal Treasury allocates these New Market Credits to CDE’s around the
country. In the last round, | think a couple hundred CDE’s applied to Treasury to get an allocation. We, the
City of Nashua, were working most carefully with Mascoma Bank which is a Bank in the upper valley that
has gotten allocations sometimes in the past. We believe that had they gotten an allocation, we would
have gotten the $4 million dollars already. But only one-third of the CDE’s who applied got New Market
Tax Credits and Mascoma was not one of them. So after that happened, Tim Cummings and our
consultant began working other CDE’s and we are kind of on their list but were not first. If other projects fell
through, we might still get an allocation from that last round. The next round will come in June or July of
this year, 2020; we are still working with Mascoma, we are trying to reach out to as many CDE’s as we
possibly can to get in line for as many CDE’s as we possibly can, because that $4 million dollars obviously
would be very important.

So | think that gives you an update on what has happened but | return to the beginning. This is a project
that is designed to build a healthier economy for downtown and for the entire City. | can tell you the fact that
we are even thinking about or looking like we are going to do this, is already creating interest from private
sector parties who are considering investing in Downtown Nashua because of this. We saw someone
suddenly get interested in the old Corriveau Routhier and the Henry Hanger sites. Those were permitted
for 200 and some units of housing; that will bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 5

Those haven't started but the developer is working with others who are going to build those projects out.
There are other sites in Nashua where people have expressed a lot of interest and it looks like they are
very serious in proceeding in part because and some people out of town, because of the Performing Arts
Center.

So the whole idea here is that you invest to attract other investment to build a stronger economy and in the
end, build a stronger tax base, build up tax revenues which benefit everyone. Because in the end, the
downtown is an economic engine like they say in Keene, the downtown is an economic engine for the City
of Nashua. So that, | think, Madam President gives you an overview. | apologize for going on as long as |
did, but this project has been pending for a while. | think some of the original objectives sometimes get
forgetten. | know people are interested, some people skeptical, some people highly supportive, but |
wanted to give you the history and kind of report to you where | think we are right now. If anybody has
questions for me and if that’s permitted, I’d be glad to answer them. But | guess next we go to Mr.
Cummings, is that correct?

President Wilshire

| am going to turn the meeting over to Alderman Dowd as Chair of the Budget Committee. So Alderman
Dowd.

Chairman Dowd

OK, just before Mr. Cummings comes up, | just want to explain what is going to happen this evening. We
are going to have a public hearing on the amendment to R-20-001 or it is an amendment to R-18-001. It is
only the amendment that this public hearing is about, not the bill itself to build the Performing Arts Center.
It is only to eliminate the time constraint for the funding. The Public Hearing | will be calling testimony in
favor and opposition, one at a time, | will ask people to come up to speak into the microphone. I’m asking
that you limit your comments to approximately 3 minutes. If everybody in this room spoke, that would be
over two hours. So please, | do not want people carrying on, especially if it is not related directly to this
Legislation because | will have to stop you.

Then after the Public Hearing we will close the Public Hearing and we will open the Budget Meeting. We
have a few pieces of Legislation in Budget to take up including this one. The Budget Committee will send
the Legislation to the Full Board of Aldermen with either a positive or a negative recommendation. The final
decision on this amendment will happen next Wednesday at the Full Board of Aldermen meeting.
Wednesday, I’m sorry there is a minor thing going on; hopefully nothing like lowa. So before we get started
with comments in Public Hearing, | am going to ask Director of Economic Development, Mr. Tim
Cummings, to come up and please present. He is assisted quite ably by Ms. Novotny.

Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development

Thank you Mr. Chairman, for the record, Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development and with me
this evening is the Chair of the Capital Campaign Committee, Deb Novotny. So provided you a
communication, a written Memo which | am going to read from which essentially provides a status update
on the project and analysis of R-18-001. So the purpose of the Memo | wrote to you is to provide an
update on the Performing Arts Center project. The Legislation strikes the two year time period for raising
the $4 million dollars.

To provide you some context relative to the timeline, the following is being provided in an effort to give you
a general context for the timing necessary to get this project up and running. The fact is, there was a lot of
initial upfront work necessary, creating, establishing and developing the differing entities that are the
vehicles to bring this project to fruition. First the Resolution authorizing the Performing Arts Center was
passed in the Winter of 2018. From there, getting the Steering Committee populated and functioning was
the next order of business; this took time.

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 6

There are many stakeholders involved. From there, the Steering Committee needed to organize itself, and
develop a rhythm which is vitally important for the project’s success. And again, it takes time. The culture
that developed is one where the Committee worked and acts in a very collaborative and consensus building
manner.

The Steering Committee developed three working groups and focused on operations, design and fund
raising. These were working groups that met throughout the spring and summer of 2018 and beyond.
Simultaneously, there was a public procurement process to solicit an architecture and engineering firm,
along with an operator and construction manager. This all occurred in the latter half of 2018. | would be
remiss not to point out that the Performing Arts Center tour took place, which was in the summer of 2018 as
well and the tour was a great team building exercise and helped to educate and give a frame of reference
for the project.

We did not engage the architect and engineers and construction manager until the winter of 2018, early of
2019 as mentioned earlier by the Mayor. And please remember we had the untimely passing of the Chair
of the Performing Arts Center Steering Committee, President Brian McCarthy which understandably
delayed some of the Committee business as we needed to reorganize ourselves. Simultaneous to all that,
the Steering Committee’s Working Group focused on fundraising while organizing and beginning to tackle
the challenge of raising private money for the Performing Arts Center. A public procurement process
occurred in the spring of 2018 to solicit a fundraising consultant as mentioned earlier this evening. Once the
selection was made to hire Full Circle Consulting, which is the company that Betsy McNamara works for, a
fundraising assessment and feasibility study began where 30ish interviews over a four to eight week period
occurred during the summer of 2018. This led to the recommendation and development of a capital
campaign plan. One of the more pressing items that developed was the need to create and organize a
capital campaign committee, recruiting and forming a capital campaign committee occurred throughout the
entire fall of 2018.

The first Capital Campaign Committee meeting occurred in December of 2018. However, just because the
Capital Campaign Committee was formed, does not mean solicitation started. Once the recruitment period
occurred an onboarding and educational process ensued. A lot of the volunteers acknowledged that this
was the first capital campaign and an educational effort transpired during the better part of the winter of
2019 and into early spring. Ironically, as the capital campaign committee was being formed, the design
process was just starting to get underway in January of 2019. The two efforts needed to go hand in hand,
because you cannot realistically solicit donations until a concrete design is achieved. Being the very high
profile public nature of this project, a robust committee process and public engagement piece occurred on
the design, which meant that the designs were not recommended by the Performing Arts Center Steering
Committee until June/July of 2019 or approved by the Board of Aldermen Infrastructure Committee until
August of 2019.

Conversely the fund raising efforts did not begin in earnest until the end of the summer of 2019. However,
the capital campaign committee did not sit idle during the spring and summer, there were a lot of “soft
meetings” taking place to develop leads. Additionally, during the preparation and organizational phase in
the spring of 2019, there was an agreement reached with City Arts of Nashua to be the fiscal agent as a
precursor to the 501(C)3 entity that was actually formed in 2019 and all of that took some time. It was
during the spring of 2019 also that an application for a CDF Tax Credit occurred and | am pleased to state
the application was successful and the project was awarded tax credits in the summer of 2019. It was a
great way to jumpstart the fundraising efforts. Fundraising efforts did not start in earnest until the end and
summer of fall of 2019. | want to give you all that recap to hopefully show and demonstrate that a lot of
work has transpired over the last couple of years, and although it may not seem it and | didn’t even realize
it until | wrote this narrative down, we have accomplished a lot of tasks in a very small amount of time. So
Mr. Chair, if | could I’d like to turn it over now to the Chair of the Capital Campaign Committee to say a few
words.

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 7
Deborah Novotny, Capital Campaign Committee

Thank you. What have we been doing again since December? We were in the training and preparation
stage, we hit the ground running in August of 2019. Today we have secured 30 pledges by meeting face to
face with people in businesses, often more than once. Remember, we are asking in a capital campaign for
major and lead gifts. We are asking people to give of their assets, not their income. So these
conversations do take time, but we have secured 30 as of last week. We are following up with several
others who are in different phases of their decision process. We have several initial meetings with people
coming up over the next two weeks.

We also have over 75 lead and top prospects identified that we need to make contact with. Actually that
just scratches the surface. The campaign is going really well; we have received positive feedback from our
community as well as other communities surrounding us. As Committee members, most of whom either
have a fulltime job or run their own business, we have been doing and will continue to do all the things that
make a Capital Campaign successful and have seen and are seeing the fruits of our hard work. Most
Capital Campaigns take 3 to 5 years and we’ve done really well in the past 7 months. We are ahead of all
of our internal milestones that we have set for ourselves and we will continue to remain on course. Ifa
deadline is required, we do request an additional two years.

Mr. Cummings

Mr. Chair, I’ll just close by saying it was never the intention for when the fundraising timeline was originally
discussed during the feasibility study for it to be memorialized, it was originally discussed as a plan or a
guide post which we should all recognize that some of the best laid plans need to change and evolve. If
the Committee wasn’t working or gaining the momentum, | could understand a concern being raised, but
this couldn’t be the furthest from the reality of the situation. The Capital Campaign Committee is working
tirelessly and they are just appealing for some more time. It is my recommendation that this body approve
R-18-001 and allow for more time for this project and the fundraising to occur.

Lastly, | just want to note that we have also an overall project status update one-pager for you. I’m not
going to go into detail on that but | do want to call out a couple particular items, particularly because there
are some audience members here who have asked me to make sure | am very clear and transparent on
some of the particular numbers with this project. So a cost estimate was recently done and it came it at
$23.8 million dollars; that’s what the project is looking at right now. The cost estimate that was recently
done is showing it to be at $23.8 million dollars. We are striving to reduce that down to something in the
order of $21 to $22 million dollars, which is the targeted goal.

We have three main sources identified for funding this project; $15.5 million dollars of City general
obligation bonds; we have identified New Market Tax Credits at $4.2 million dollars and then local private
fundraising capital at $2.5 million. That raises us, if all in, at $22.2 million dollars. So the overall financial
plan would be to use 70% of the project funding coming from the general obligation bond; 20ish% from the
New Market Tax Credits and then 10% from the Capital Campaign Committee. We are working towards
that 20% as a New Market Tax Credit. We are working towards that 10% as the local philanthropic
charitable capital to be contributed to the project. That’s 30% of the total project funding. We have
confidence in the 10% that’s coming together, if you are willing to give us an extension of the timeline and
we are working aggressively for that other 20%. That other 20% through the New Market Tax Credit is
beyond our control, and it is something that we won't really learn about until early summer, June or July
timeframe. So | just want to make sure that everyone understands that. So there is a possibility at some
point that we may need to revisit how to close that 20% gap in the funding plan once we hear from the New
Market Tax Credit folks as to where things stand come early summer.

So | just want to make sure that was also very clearly understood again for folks. With that being said, Mr.
Chair, | hope this evening this body feels as though they can support the Resolution and votes in favor of
the Legislation before you. Thank you.

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 8
Chairman Dowd

Ok as is the case, all public hearings for the people that presented, are there any questions from any of the
Aldermen before we proceed to public input?

Alderman Jette

People are concerned about the status of the project. | understand what you have said about the quiet
phase, | think you called it, about the fundraising and that the fundraising professional that we have
engaged has been advising you to proceed in this way with this quiet phase. The problem, as I’ve told you,
is that when we don’t say how much money we’ve got, people are assuming you don’t have any. The
$250,000.00 that Bank of America announced last week | think it was, was great news. But that’s the first
we've heard about any money. Now the Mayor has said that Enterprise has added $100,000.00 to that.
What can you tell us to kind of give us comfort that when you say “things are going well’ it would be great to
know how well they are going and how much money you have been able to raise so far.

Ms. Novotny

Thank you for the question Alderman Jette. We have 30 lead-in major donor gifts at this time. Can you
hear me now? We have 30 lead-in major gifts right now and we have about 20 on the table that we are
waiting for their final commitment on. As the Mayor said, we had a $250 public announcement from Bank
of America, that was there choice to publicly announce their gift. We, prior to their gift, we had already sold
the tax credits and Enterprise Bank was already in before Bank of America made their gift as were several
other businesses and individuals. So you did the math, | know you all can do the math, so you know what
we have a minimum of and | can tell you we have more than that, obviously. We are following a proven
capital campaign strategy.

The capital campaign strategy is to raise 70% of our goal by having conversations, face to face, with
businesses and individuals. We have a core committee of eight people who all work either at a full time job
orrun a business. lf we were to go public at this time, we don’t have the resources and we are not ready.
We really want to have 70% of the goal before we announce it.

Chairman Dowd

All set Alderman Jette?

Alderman Jette

No. If | could, so when you say “do the math”, | know Bank of America has pledged $250,000.00. The
State Tax credit from the community development finance authority you know the Mayor mentioned $300

hundred and something. But actually the amount that we are getting from that Is $294,000.00, correct?
OK. And then Enterprise is $100,000.00? So | add up $644,000.00 right now.

Ms. Novotny
We have 30 pledges.
Alderman Jette

But you can’t say how much that equals?

Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 9

Ms. Novotny

No because it will, again, there’s a reason that we are in this quiet phase, it’s because of the conversations
that we are having. And once we talk about the dollar amount, we are not longer in the quiet phase, we are
in the public phase. And we have a lot more conversations to be had in the quiet phase. We all know that
our goal is $2.5. We also know that there are New Market Tax Credits that we are not sure about. So we
are committed to raising more than $2.5. We are really trying to get as close as we can to the $2.5 before
we go into the public phase. Part of the public phase is to sell the seats in the auditorium and the
Performing Arts Center; 750 seats for $1,000.00 each. That would be part of the public campaign so we
our goal is to raise more than $2.5; we just want to be as close to the $2.5 after having these conversations
that are already scheduled before we go into that public phase. We do have several members of the
community who have said they were going to help us in the public phase. So planning the events, the
social media, admin support, they are ready and their marketing support, they are really getting those
things in place now to be ready to go into the public phase. We anticipate that they will have an event
where they will invite all of our donors who are already on-board and recognize them, each of them who
want to be recognized and then announce the total. | think that momentum of announcing the total at that
type of event is going to be the most successful way to raise more money for the Performing Arts Center.

Chairman Dowd
There are several people who want to ask questions, have you got another question?
Alderman Jette

| do have more questions. So is it reasonable that these announcements could occur by the summer?

Ms. Novotny

We hope so. You know it is February and we have a really good pipeline. One of the things that we were
talking about today, because | thought this may be a question, is of all of the people that you’ve talked to
and had conversations with, has anyone that you asked said, “no”. And we don’t have anyone that has
said “no”. We have people that have pledged, we have people who said they need to, again, we are asking
not to do 10% of their income, we are asking them to go into their CD’s and savings account and take
money out of their assets to give it to us. That’s a conversation that they not only need to have with us to
really understand the project and what is going to mean to Nashua, but then they need to go and talk to
their families about it.

So in respect to them, we are giving them the time because we know any capital campaign, you don’t ask

someone and they write you a check for $1 million dollars. | wish they would, if anyone in the room wants

to, that would be great but that isn’t what happens. It is conversations, multiple conversations with people

to show them the value of what the Performing Arts Center will bring. And that’s what we are doing in face
to face meetings with these donors.

Alderman Jette

And if | could, one last question for Ms. Novotny, the State Tax Credits of $294 is that part of your $2.5 or is
your $2.5? That’s part of it? OK. Thank you.

Ms. Novotny

And | will tell you a little bit as far as those tax credits go, people who purchased those tax credits, are
making a decision to have money directed to the State of New Hampshire be applied to this project. And
they specifically choose this project. So it does show, the fact that we have already sold all of the tax
credits, does show that we have a lot of support in the community as well as from Bank of America, as well
as from many of the local banks, as well as from many of the downtown businesses.