Special Board of Aldermen 03-15-2021 Page 4
at the time, that the public/private aspect made this a project that they would devote some funds to. What
the meant by a public/private partnership is a partnership in which the EPA and a private developer would
share the cost to do the cleanup.
So we proceeded along that course. Initially there was an EPA Report regarding what was required for a
cleanup. The EPA Report recommended a consolidation of the waste into one area and a covering of the
material. The potential developer was also on board at that time and there was following the EPA’s decision
that it would get involved in that type of cleanup, but would not get involved in a removal because that was
two reasons; a lot more money and they said you are just moving the waste from one place to another.
After the EPA indicated that was its preferred solution then there was an undertaking to determine what the
approximate cost would be. Now that has taken some period of time and they and the developer have
exchanged plans and have arrived at at least an approximate cost.
The City along the way, of course, has encouraged this public/private partnership. Getting this area
cleaned up would be certainly a benefit. It has been clear the public/private partnership arises because the
site would be developed by a private developer into housing or assisted living. There have been various
ideas and plans presented, nothing definite yet to date; possibly some commercial development out near
the Broad Street Parkway and there would be access to the Broad Street Parkway. Along the way the City
has made it very clear that we are very interested in the public/private partnership that if a small amount of
City funds were necessary to sort of close the gap we might be willing to participate. But under no
conditions would we pay for the cleanup, we were most interested in the public/private partnership originally
proposed by the EPA.
That’s pretty much where we are now. They’ve sort of narrowed down the solution, begun to narrow down
the cost and we decided we should come to you now just because we hadn’t reported to you for some time
and we wanted to give you an update on where things stand at the present time. So I’ve given you an
overview but Mr. Cummings has been involved in very detailed discussions over time with the EPA, the
developer. We have had some neighborhood meetings along the way and Director Cummings will fill you
in on the remaining details.
President Wilshire
Thank you Mayor. Director Cummings, good evening.
Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development
Yes thank you Madam President, for the record Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development. |
appreciate you making the opportunity this evening as I’d like to give you a brief overview as to where we
stand with the Mohawk Tannery Project. So | have a few goals that I’d like to accomplish this evening.
First, |am hoping to just provide some general background and history. | am not sure whom on this Board
is actually familiar with this subject matter and as it has been a new Board since probably the last time we
discussed this, | thought it would be good just to give an overall update on the subject matter.
The update though is going to be really just confined to the last 2 or 3 three years relative to the efforts not
anything of past history. And then lastly | want to assess the appetite relative to a TIF as this is something
that had been discussed previously and | am just looking to get some direction and some feedback on the
idea of using this type of tool for this specific project.
So one of the things | thought | would do and | promise | am not going to share my screen for too long as |
know members don’t like to have screen share up. But | thought it would be wise just to quickly show my
screen if | could and orientate everyone into where we are exactly talking about within the City of Nashua.
So what you have up in front of you is a map that shows where my cursor is going down, that’s the Broad
Street Parkway right there. This is Fairmount Street right here; | give this to you just so you have some sort
of orientation. So over the next hour or so you are going to hear me talk about differing land areas and |
just thought you'd like to have this type of context. So right here, this is what we refer to as the City
