Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 12
Elaine Oulundsen | live on Raymond Street in Nashua. I’ve lived in Nashua for 35 years. | am on the Board of
Directors for the Nashua International Sculpture Symposium. | am very much in favor of this resolution. For
me, the Performing Arts Center is an investment in Nashua’s future. Nashua will benefit greatly from the
completion of the Performing Arts Center. | have many, many friends who live in Massachusetts and they tell
me all the time, they are asking me all the time, “how is it going”. They want to come here to partake in this
Performing Arts Center when it is completed.
People want to live in and visit a vibrant City. We are so fortunate to have so many family run restaurants and
shops downtown. Many are second and third generation small businesses and they are Main Street’s heart
and soul. They are the heart and soul of Main Street. Currently Nashua, everybody knows this, but it bears
repeating, currently Nashua holds the award for NH’s most creative City/Community, most creative community.
We have become a destination for the arts and continuing to build on our foundation of great music, murals,
sculptures and our many great American Downtown activities and festivals, it just makes sense to continue to
build on that by having a Performing Arts Center. Completion of the Performing Arts Center would likely create
120 jobs and bring approximately 70,000 people to downtown. There’s a nonprofit organization known as
American’s for the Arts which focuses on advancing the arts in the United States. | would recommend folks
check out their web site. Their web site explains how investing in the arts has a positive economic return. Go to
Americansforthearts.com. So let’s courageously keep moving forward and create the Performing Arts Center.
Many years from now generations to come will be grateful. Thank you.
Marc Thayer Hi everybody,my name is Marc Thayer, | live at 1 ClockTower Place, it’s downtown if you haven’t
heard of it. And | am the Executive Director of Symphony New Hampshire. The Symphony was founded here
in 1923 and until very recently it was known as the Nashua Symphony Orchestra. We are excited about
coming to our 100" Anniversary in three years. And | am very happy to speak now in favor of this amendment
and this building project which is very important to us and to our future and the future of the City.
We just hired a new music director. Roger Collier, who will be moving here with his wife from California. He is
also very excited about being involved with the Performing Arts Center. We know this Arts Center will be a
valuable asset in downtown Nashua and will generate increased business for our restaurants, hotels and other
businesses on Main Street. We know our favorite restaurants on Main Street are packed before and after our
concerts. Sometimes | can’t get in. The Symphony will continue to need the Keefe Auditorium for its size and
seating capacity, but we also look forward to using the new PAC for smaller orchestra concerts, educational
programs and new types of concerts that you might not expect from an orchestra. We are seeing, in the past
few years, more and more people coming to our concerts from Billerica, and Lowell and other small towns
around here that | can’t pronounce. We have audience members coming from Exeter, Lebanon and
Francestown and Jaffrey, believe it or not. They are becoming donors, they are bringing revenue to Nashua;
that’s what the arts do. They are bringing people and money here.
The PAC will increase pedestrian traffic on Main Street which will help security at night and make Main Street a
more desirable place for new businesses to locate. We believe we are stronger together; more concerts
happening here in Nashua means more people coming here and more awareness and visibility for all of us.
This tells people that you don’t have to go to Boston for quality arts and concerts. We also know we fail
together, with less to do here, our audiences and visitors will look elsewhere. There is a lot of competition for
entertainment on Saturday nights and we want people coming to Nashua for dinner and a show. | have been
involved in various building projects and capital campaigns elsewhere and this is a very normal process with
the quiet phase and if you blow that and screw it up and go public too soon, you lose all of those major pledges,
that’s a very common practice and it works everywhere.
On a personal note, | moved here four years for this job. | don’t have family here, | didn’t go to school here, |
have no nostalgic connections to Nashua or New Hampshire. | am one of those statistics that you are talking
about trying to get to move here to work. | enjoy living downtown, we enjoy the street festivals, the farmer's
market, the live music up and down Main Street. When this project was first voted down by the former Board of
Aldermen it really made me consider whether or not | wanted to live here. You need this project, City’s don’t
stay static, they improve or they decline. You’ve made so much progress in the past few years, please don’t
start to go backwards now. Thank you.
