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
