Board of Aldermen 2-12-2020 Page 3
President Wilshire
We have 9 people signed up to speak and we do have a 15-minute public comment period. | know a lot of
people spoke at the Public Hearing so if you could keep your comments so that other people have an
opportunity that haven’t spoken. Please give your name and address for the record please?
Jay Brooks 55 Lake Street, and | am the owner of the one of our local businesses and | believe that the
Performing Arts Center is something that we do need for our City. | believe that will help not only my
business, but our children’s and basically turn this into a City that people want to come to, to come to our
downtown. Our downtown needs work. If you are going to compete with Manchester, if we are going to
compete with Boston, if we are going to bring cultural aspects into our City, we need to have a place to do
those things. The Performing Arts Center is one of those places to do that. So | don’t have a lot more to
say other than, thank you very much.
Deb Novotny 65 McKenna Drive, I’m here on behalf of the Capital Campaign Committee | am in support of
the amendment we heard at the Budget Committee. This extra time will give us the extra time to obtain our
goal. Thank you.
Karen Bill Hi Karen Bill, Nashua, New Hampshire, 95 Parnell Place. | am not a business that is going to
benefit from the Arts Center, I’m not a restaurant that is going to benefit from the Arts Center. | have no
stake in downtown and | have no stake in the Arts Center bringing any revenue into my pocket whatsoever.
It Kind of made me wonder since the last meeting about the monetary benefit that the establishment that’s
running or who is set to be hired to run the event center what they bring or what Nashua gets out of it. |
don’t know what Nashua as a town gets out of it, what benefits, monetary benefits. | know that that building
brought in $47,000.00 worth of taxes per year in 2012 and in 2017, $50,000.00 worth of taxes. So that’s
$100,000.00 lost in the last two years and again the next two years going forward, so that’s $200,000.00 of
tax money that we are not getting.
| assume that since it will be a non-profit that we will get zero tax dollars going forward, correct me if I’m
wrong. Also, | was looking at the Tupelo Center. The Tupelo Music Hall in Derry now, it was in
Londonderry, it was born in 2004 with 200 seats. It took them 13 years until 2017 to move venue location
and have it be a 700 seat arena, 13 years of growth. So although the plan for the Performing Center calls
for an increase from 500 to 750 seats, you can say we are going to put 2,000 seats in some place, but it
doesn’t means you are going to have butts in those seats. And when it all comes down to it, it’s butts in
seats because that’s dollars in the kitty, ok?
So | know that there is a recommendation to go forward with this, | am not in favor of the recommendation; |
thin that the promises have not been kept from the original vote that the voters of this City entrusted the
people to do. The costs have gone up, they are going to go up more, mark my word they will go up more.
Because it’s a year and a half out. So | am very concerned that the $15.5 bond, somewhere along the line,
| mean if in your decision-making process you go forward with this that there is a — you know — you can’t
just keep, again, extending and you know extending the deadline or extending a monetary amount because
it would be wrong to those voters that voted for it. Remember 155 people more voted for it but remember
again as | mentioned last week 551 people did not even answer the question which begs the ... you have
to wonder why. | have the actual ballot with me. The question is this long. So you have to wonder why
551 people didn’t even vote for it if they were confused or just didn’t want it. But | am not in favor of moving
forward and if you do, please keep in mind all these statistics that | have brought to your attention. Thank
you very much.
Mary Theresa Freund My name is Mary Theresa Freund, 3 Masefield Road in Nashua. A Performing Arts
Center would not only be a cultural boon for the City but would be a source of revenue for local businesses
who in turn I’m supposing would pay more in taxes. Whenever Great American Downtown sponsors a
cultural event, there is an influx of visitors from surrounding communities; from paid events like Taste of
Downtown to free events like the Nu Muse. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the winter like the Holiday Stroll or
temperate seasons like the Nu Muse, the Roots Festival.
