To the Nashua Board of Alderman:
We, at Nashua Riverfront Dentistry, are a family-owned dental business. We were shut
down during the beginning of the pandemic and when, in 2020, the barricades were
installed to help the restaurants re-open with expanded outdoor dining, we cheered at
the effort. We believed this was important to get people back to work and to help
restore our community with a small amount of normalcy.
That was in 2020. Now comes 2021 with barricades again. We sincerely believe that
ALL businesses on Main Street should be permitted the opportunity to succeed and
thrive. That was not the case in 2021. Many of our customers are elderly or disabled
and had difficulty finding parking even in our own private parking at the rear of the
building. This is because a lot of people, with the lack of parking on Main Street,
decided to illegally use our lot. Also, the barricades as you exit Pearson Av, made it
very difficult for old people (and not) to make an easy right turn and enter traffic.
Our employees travel to work from out of town and the elimination of two lanes means it
takes 2-3 times as long to travel Main Street getting to work. Our delivery truck must
plan extra time for the traffic on Main Street when there are just two lanes. The effect
has been fewer patients served because of the barricades.
Therefore, we DO NOT support the use of barricades for expanded outdoor dining. We
DO support outdoor dining and our local restaurant businesses. In fact, we support
them as customers; we are frequent patrons of all the restaurants on Main Street. But
even our staff has found with the barricades it takes too long to order take-out from a
restaurant on the other side of Main Street. We cannot pickup the food and get back to
the south end of Main Street with enough time to eat.
The proposed ordinance will effectively cause economic hardship for certain businesses
on Main Street in favor of other businesses on Main Street. We think this is unfair and
wrong. The proposed ordinance will effectively support and promote customer activity
for some shoppers while impeding the ability of other customers (i.¢., elderly and
disabled) from shopping on Main Street. We have seen this firsthand in our business
during 2020 and 2021. We cannot tolerate another year of this unfair and unwarranted
preference for some businesses and customers over others.
In 2022, Main Street should be open for business for all customers and all businesses;
Covid19 protective measures like mask wearing and social distancing can continue to
occur without the barricades on Main Street. Outdoor dining will continue to occur
without the barricades. We believe the overreaching ordinance for expanded outdoor
dining and barricades on Main Street should not be adopted because it is restrictive to
general commerce, discriminates against certain shoppers, and promotes economic
preference for some businesses over others.
