Board of Aldermen — 9/12/17 Page 18
foundation in downtown Nashua. You have some terrific restaurants and terrific businesses. It’s really grown
and become more vital and they’ve done that for you. So now let’s support them. Let’s support the Peacock
Players, the Nashua Actors Guild, the Nashua Area Artist Association, the Sculpture Symposium. These are
organizations and efforts worth lifting up with us. | would like to close with | think there’s nothing that brings
people together as a community more than a love of music, art, theater, and good food. Thank you.
Nelson Hernandez, 19 Spring Cove Road.
I'll keep it brief since other people have said a lot more eloquent stuff than | can. I’m Nelson Hernandez. I’ve
lived in and out of 19 Spring Cove Road in Ward 5 for the past 16 years. | want to say that | graduated from
Boston University about five years ago and | work in the marketing technology sector. | want to say that
people like me so my peers and | what we look for in a town when we’re trying to look for a place to live is how
vibrant is the cultural community in that town. Most people my age and in my social economic group always
took to Boston, or Manchester, or Cambridge, or so on because those cities offer a lot of cultural opportunities.
That’s why | think that this center would be great for Nashua because it brings those type of amenities that
those cities have right here in Nashua. So we don’t have to go elsewhere or when we go to college and come
back and graduate, we can just come here. We don’t have to look elsewhere.
My generation is going to be the future of the country so | think that for us we would really like to have a center
like this come to our city so that when we come here either to move here or to visit our parents or whatever, we
can also partake in the Nashua community and buy whatever stuff after the show or whatever and just partake
in the greater community in Nashua. That’s all | wanted to say. Thank you so much for letting me speak and
thank you for everyone who has already spoken. A lot of good points have been brought up. Thank you.
Jessica dePontbriand, 15 Bailey
Board of Aldermen and Mayor Donchess. Jessica dePontbriand owner of jajaBelle’s. Mostly Ward 1 life-long
resident, mostly. | left at the last meeting at about midnight and | woke up at 3 a.m. My wheels were turning.
When you own a coffee shop going to bed at midnight and waking up at 3 a.m. is not fun. | was really thinking
about a city in a downtown that | grew up in. | was thinking about the city that | left and the city that | returned
for no other reason but to bring my business to Nashua.
One thing I’ve learned in life and definitely business is that we have to take risks sometimes that we don’t
necessarily know we can afford but we know we can’t afford not to. The performing arts center is one of those
crossroads. We are at the crossroads with this. Nashua has played it safe for a very long time and as a result,
we are in trouble with attracting and retaining our millennials. | grew up in Ward 1 before | Knew what
millennials were. My friends they’re graduates of Duke University, Bentley, Notre Dame but no one chose to
return to Nashua. They visit at Christmas time and at Thanksgiving. As a business owner, I’ve been blessed
with a wonderful staff. When | do lose my girls, | lose them to much more exciting cities and that’s the truth.
| Know it’s not the city’s responsibility to claim the success or the failure of my business. Itis mine. However
when | don’t know some of you may not recognize is that the downtown merchants and restaurants we’re the
welcoming committee to your city. When people come into our town they don’t go to the south end to check
out Nashua. They come straight to the downtown and we’re the ones that welcome them and we are the
reason they return to Nashua. A few things I’ve learned about visitor to Nashua. First of all, they never
complain about parking. It’s really kind of a local thing. It’s the truth. The next thing they always do is always
comment on how beautiful our downtown actually is. A lot of come into my shop wanting to move to downtown
Nashua and then they ask me the dreaded question. What is there to do? That’s where I’m at a loss. | started
my business JaJaBelle’s over 10 years ago in Vail, Colorado.
| have maintained my customer base. My customers who have multiple homes throughout this country and
some pretty magnificent spots and whenever they’re on the east coast | get a phone call. Hey how far is your
show from and they get in the car and they have driven hours to come check out my hometown of Nashua,
New Hampshire, and come and check out JaJaBelle’s. The first comment they always make — not it’s actually
the second comment. The first comment is they’re proud. The second comment they always make is they
