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.
