Special Board of Aldermen 01-28-2020 Page 3
Mr. Nelson
Yes sir.
Alderman Lopez
In the low income neighborhoods you need to learn how to cook, prepare food and handle the stove.
Mr. Nelson
So we are crossing Off all the possible barriers that will exist in this project. There are a lot of volunteers
doing these projects, so it makes sense for us to get ahead of the curve. We talked to Nick Caggiano
about getting creative with some of our parks that are in that area, during that short window of time. We
are trying to eliminate all the barriers that would exist.
Alderman Laws
First of all | think this is wonderful, this is fantastic and thank you so much for doing things like this. It
makes me so happy to hear. That being said, how long is this project going to take? You said that earlier.
Mr. Halley The project is actually going to start quietly probably in mid-March, in that there are long lead
items like the elevator that was ordered today. We have a contractor that is going to come in and do the
excavation, put a foundation in. Set the foundation for the porch that will go on the front of the building.
The elevator will probably start mid-April. The build occurs in 9 or 10 days and finishes right about May
16", Mother’s Day. So we will have a formal ground breaking, but we will have already broken ground. We
will invite everybody in this room to participate and to stay for the week. That’s the honest to God truth.
Then we wrap up and we typically have a party on the Sunday right around Mother’s Day; they will have a
band, they will food, we feed all the contractors two meals a day and when we did in NPAL we fed the
neighborhood for the time that we were there. Kids were coming out of tenement blocks not having supper.
You would cry; it was just an extremely emotional thing. This is going to be transformational for them. | just
want to share a couple of quick things just to set the stage.
When we did the Crisis Center in Concord last year, they were chosen but we made it conditional. So they
asked us to come in and renovate the shelter. When we were doing the interview they shared with us their
10-year vision. | am going to cry. What we said to them is, “make your 10-year vision a 10-month vision
and we'll do it”. Out of that process, a doctor from Concord Hospital stepped up and bought them a
$300,000.00 building down the street. They now had an administrative office building and cleared the
shelter, they now serve over 25 people in the shelter, where they were serving maybe 8. Yesterday | had a
conversation with the executive director, they have gone from a staff of 6, they are going to go to staff of
20. The fact that they have the infrastructure to support their mission, which is not all about a shelter,
there’s a lot of outreach, they are in the schools, they are talking about women and children and abuse and
all those kinds of things. They are going to go to 20 people; their panic now is to renovate the third floor of
the building that was given to them to accommodate that staff. That’s what is going to happen here in PAL.
When we did Manchester Police Athletic League, it was a crazy scope, it was over $1 million. Quite
honestly three months in we were all questioning “how are we going to do this”. We had a contractor walk
in on a Friday morning, and literally said, “I'll take care of it all, mechanically”. He put three guys on-site for
four months, and donated $400,000.00 and put an entire system in the building. That will happen here, that
is already happening here. | mean | can tell you that, name a contractor, they are involved. There are a lot
of people and it’s a way for the construction community, the design community to come together to meet
each other. I’ve gotten work out of it, | mean | still have to earn a living, but | do a lot of this, and it’s not to
earn a living but to pay it forward. What is going to happen with PAL is just going to be transformational. It
is going to be something totally different.
