Board of Aldermen 2-06-2020 Page 23
So what | am asking is yes | understand that were in the process of an amazing thing, however, and there is
some work still to be done, but what | do ask as you cast your vote and as you are thinking about this, is not to
have an open deadline. What is realistic? What is your commitment back to the people of a deadline so that
everybody does the work that is necessary to achieve this goal.
Beth Scaer East Hobart Street. | heard the Mayor say this project was well thought out. If it was, why didn’t
you raise the $4 million dollars. You have already proven that this project was poorly conceived and poorly
managed. | want to thank my Alderman June Caron for pledging to vote against this amendment and | hope
the rest of you can do that as well. The Mayor has already said we are going to see property taxes going up
because of the healthcare costs and we can’t afford this. Thank you.
TESTIMONY IN FAVOR
Rich Lannan Good evening, Rich Lannan, 11 McGrath Road in Pelham. | live in Pelham but my office has
been in Nashua for about 42 years. | own property downtown and | am a glutton for punishment and am pretty
much on every single PAC meet committee since its inception. | started with the Duncan Webb study, | was
asked to be on a study group to discuss and look into starting a Performing Arts Center and there was a good
group, there were some Aldermen involved, there was public involved, it was a good — and | a learned a lot at
that. That’s when we vetted out several different consultants and Duncan Webb was hired. One thing, just for
the people who don’t know at that point, when that study was started, we gave them some criteria of what we
really want. What was our wish list? And the wish list was obviously the Performing Arts Center, at the time
the Symphony was requested if we could house them, 1,500 foot theater and the two biggest parts of that,
beyond cost which is obviously a very important thing, was can Nashua support a Performing Arts Center? We
asked all of the people and all of the people we talked to that was interviewing to being our consultants,
including Duncan Webb, all these people were unbiased because they were not going to build this. So they
pretty much said, half the time we come back and say, sorry folks we have bad news, you can’t support it. So
that was good to hear from all of them and Duncan Webb really stressed that, that half the time he comes back
and he hates walking into a room and giving the bad news.
It wasn’t until far into his study, well along and all was talked about new theaters built on Spring Street, on High
Street, renovating Keefe, renovating Court Street, 201 Main Street wasn’t on the radar because Alec’s Shoes
was there. So it wasn’t until far into that project consultant stage, when Alec’s Shoe decided to move and that
became available; so that was two different time periods. But when he came back, two things that | remember
clearly was, “| have good news and bad news, the good news is | think Nashua can definitely support it” and he
gave us all the reasons why but probably more like 500 or 550 seats at that time. That's way before there was
a Steering Committee or a Campaign Committee or any other Committee, it was a feasibility committee out to
see what can Nashua support.
So from then eventually, fast forwarding, obviously we eventually came before the Board of Aldermen a couple
of years ago. When the Board of Aldermen gave the vote of no, it went to the public, the majority of the public
voted obviously in favor. When it came back to the Board there was nobody on that Committee at that time that
said, “don’t worry, we are going to raise $4 million dollars and we are going to do it in 2 years’. That was
imposed by members of that Board of Aldermen at that time. It was an arbitrary number saying, “we want $4
million dollars raised” and it was arbitrary to say, “we'll give it 2 years”. Nobody asked for that so it wasn’t like
folks, we are going to raise $4 million dollars, give us two years, it'll be done. There wasn’t really a Committee
even at that point that was even asking for that. It wasn’t until that vote was done that the Steering Committee
was formed and the work really started.
Going again, fast-forwarding a little bit because I’ve been involved in the Steering Committee, I’m on the Capital
Campaign Committee and as Deb said earlier | am the President of the newly formed 501(c)3. | will say some
people | knew already and a lot of people | have gotten to know that | have never known before. There were
people that are here tonight and spoke like Mark Thayer and Lindsay, that | never knew before, and very
impressed with all 3 Committees of the knowledge and very diverse a of different opinions, a lot of knowledge
came out of those. And all 3 Committees have worked extremely hard, a lot of hours and whether there was a
$4 million dollar amount, whether you eliminated the $4 million dollars altogether, whatever number, what time
