Board of Aldermen 03-09-2021 Page 11
President Wilshire
Thank you. Alderman Jette are you all set.
Alderman Jette
lam. So is it clear that I’ve made the motion to strike that second paragraph?
President Wilshire
Yes.
Alderman Jette
Yes.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
Thank you. So | want to begin by saying | appreciate Alderman Jette bringing this up. It was a specific priority
of the soccer community; they were looking forward to that original field space. And it is unfortunate that the
Renaissance Downtown Program, you know, “downtown” being used loosely here as their project basically
redefines where it Downton extends to, has been scaled down over the years. They brought a lot of
enthusiasm and a lot of interest from different members of the community, through their Visualize Nashua
Programing and that has yielded a lot of really good development in the City that the original organization
holding basically hearings, had nothing to do with it. Things like Positive Street Art, Nashua Area Kayak
Exploration Destination, Row NH — those were all programs where people went to participate in the data
gathering process that Renaissance Downtown was holding. Renaissance Downtown elicited all of this
excitement about the opportunities that their project was going to have. There was a whole Riverfront
Promenade being planned and shops all of this kind of stuff.
It was very, very — it engendered a lot of passion but | mean as we discussed in the Committee meeting last
year, a lot of that is not happening. And where we were at last time was they were having trouble making the
project viable because they didn’t have enough square footage to squeeze all the buildings that they needed
on there. And the concerns that were brought up at the Committee were that, well if you take away all the
green space and just stack a bunch of buildings in there, you are creating another problem for the City where
the City is going to need to come up something to do. There is, in that area, a park being planned as part of
the rearranging and reorganizing of the City or of the streets to allow for the increased traffic flow. But that
doesn’t help the soccer community and soccer is one of those priorities that just keeps falling by the wayside
for our City. We keep losing opportunities, we don’t have any kind of indoor soccer field, we don’t have a
stadium or anything like that. It’s the sport that is growing so that was a lot of what we talked about at the
meeting and | appreciate Alderman Jette bringing it up.
| don’t know exactly how well it will be received installing an artificial turf and lights in Mine Falls so | would love
to have the Mine Falls Advisory Board’s opinion on that before we get too focused on that. But | do think that
the general idea of ensuring that money that comes out of the sacrifice of that property does go back into the
populations that had to, you know, essentially see another amenity passed up, it is important. | think we do
need to figure out more places to put soccer fields. | think we do need to ensure that with all the development
we are doing and | appreciate the Mayor focusing so much on housing, making sure that we are also providing
quality there. Because if kids are going to grow up in that area or adults are going to need to blow off steam,
then we need to have healthy ways for them to do it. And if it is going to be considered part of Nashua’s future
downtown, it needs to look like a future downtown and not just tenement housing.
