Board of Aldermen 03-08-2022 Page 10
ESTABLISHING AN EXPENDABLE TRUST FUND FOR 14 COURT STREET EXPENSES, FUNDED BY
APPROPRIATIONS
Given its second reading;
President Wilshire
Alderman O’Brien
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you Madam President, | would like to make a motion for final passage of R-22-008 and if allowed, I’d like to make
brief comments on my motion?
President Wilshire
Yes.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you Madam President. Folks if there are any questions on this, please go to 14 Court Street and take a look at it.
The building is tired. It’s been a property of the city for an awful long time. Its history was once was a fire station. It was
vacated in 1971 and since then it was brought back to life as the former Mayor Streeter Theater that was located in it.
Within it there are the Peacock Players and different other community groups. My own daughters took Irish step dancing
at that facility and so it has a connection with the community, particularly with the youth. But again, | have been there, |
have used the bathrooms there, | have seen the theater itself get very, very tired.
At the whim of a city Budget at times we kind of meet a crunch. Does money really go into it? It’s very easy to take a
pencil and eraser and cross off a line item. But if we put it into an expendable trust, what we will be doing is earmarking a
nominal amount of money into this project to help maintain this valuable asset for the community. So therefore | urge you
to vote with me in support of this. It’s something of a gem. As firefighters, it does have some historical content. | guess
the horses names that ran out of the building was “Ash and Cinder”, go figure, but anyways. It does have a historical
content to the City and so therefore | think it’s well worth to have the trust fund. Thank you Madam President.
Alderman Lopez
| agree with what Alderman O’Brien said. The building being characterized as the reason we’re keeping it is because of
the fire relays. That may be true, but that’s not the reason — that’s knowledge to me, but | do know when we'’re talking
about the performing arts center from the very beginning there was great concern from the community performers that we
would be building a performing arts center designed to bring in large scale audience acts and outside performers at the
detriment of them. We wouldn’t be remembering that they needed a place to perform. It might be losing the community
theater and for people who may not participate in that or experience it themselves, | can see how this might look like we're
trying to add meaning to a building, but | don’t think we are. | think that building has served a tremendous amount of need
over the years. I’ve seen many shows in both the upper and lower theater and it does have a heritage to it. | think it’s an
essential resource for our theater community. | think it’s important to support them as they come back from COVID
because a lot of their shows were entirely shut down if not heavily scaled-back due to occupancy numbers and that type
of thing. They deserve as much of a chance to return to normal as anybody else does. | think they enrich our community
by doing that, so I’ve been personally an advocate of improving Court Street Theater and supporting the groups that
interact with it for years because of its place in the community not because of any particular operational attributes that it
has.
| do recognize it as one of the first fire stations. It has historical relevance and | find that using it as a community center
and for community performance groups and in the very ways that are developing for it. It maintains that historical legacy
without just becoming a shrine that we have to pay money to maintain. So | consider this to be an efficient and effective
use of the space as it is currently configured. We have Liquid Therapy - a business operating out of there generating
revenue for us, increasing traffic to that area, keeping it viable. We have the potential for many more community
performances to take place there. There are artist lofts inside as well supporting local artists who need space to do their
work and to create. It’s in good proximity to the Public Library, the expanded parking that the Public Library offers when
they have shows.
It’s a great reason and | would consider it poorly conceived to suggest simply removing it and sending groups that have
performed in Nashua for years just to go find space elsewhere in Downtown where that’s not quite as easy as it may
