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
