Board of Aldermen — 9/12/17 Page 22
beneficial what is truly a great American downtown. As committed members of the passionate Nashua
community, it’s our sincere effort that tonight the Board is able to recognize the unique opportunity to present it
here and is without question a paramount decision in the history of the gate city for the future of the gate city.”
Thank you very much.
Arthur Craffey, 107 Chestnut Street
Good evening Mr. Mayor, Alderman McCarthy and the rest of the Board. When | first heard of this, | said this
is great. It’s been a long time dream of this Board, the city, the mayors, and many, many boards. When | sat
in the board it was a dream of mine. Then | got to thinking | walked by Alec Shoes there many times on my
daily walks since I’ve retired. I’ve looked at the size of Alec Shoes. I’m wondering how in the heck are we
going to put a performance arts center in here and actually have something in there that’s actually going to
feasible to pay for itself especially with the city running it. We look at the Keefe Auditorium, you look at Court
Street, and | think nothing seems to be going forward. The lady over here pointed out earlier, it's got to be run
as a business. If you can’t put the Symphony in there, how are you going to put something in that’s going to
pay some money? She said you need 3 or 4 events each year to pay to break even. The Symphony in there
would be great. That’s sold out all the time. The Nutcracker which is our biggest seller you can hardly get
tickets for every year sells out. That would be enough to pay operational expenses in itself. It’s got to be run
as a business yes.
The second thing | was concerned with is parking. Where are you going to park? Handicapped people that
come to these events where are they going to park? You can’t. There’s no place to drop them off. There’s no
handicapped parking. Parking downtown as we know is a pain. You go over to Keefe Auditorium to see them
park. They park in the streets. There’s plenty of parking when they park at Keefe. The other issue | had was
the city running it. | mean come on guys. We have enough with trying to balance our own budgets. We can’t
run it up as ourselves. If we were to take this at all, | would like to see the city just hand it off. Let it be
privately run. Set up a Board of Directors like we did with Pennichuck and let it run on its own. Get our
reimbursement back and say bye, bye. Let it run own its own. Let it be run private. Don’t have the city
involved. Yes we own it but let it run like Pennichuck runs. Their own Board of Directors and let it go. Don’t
let the city have its fingers in it at all. That’s all. Thank you very much.
Shoshanna Kelly, 18 Rene Drive, Nashua.
Good evening. | want to thank everyone for their time — the Board, the Mayor. | think we’ve heard a lot from
our community. A lot of people have shared their personal stories. They’ve talked about feasibility and they’ve
talked about impact. My name is Shoshanna Kelly. I’m at 18 Rene Drive. | think we’ve looked at a lot of
facets of this project and what | want to talk about is energy. | know that the Mayor brought up that the energy
in downtown is really palatable right now. My husband and | we moved here right after college. We were living
in downtown right in Clocktower Place. From there we moved to buying a house, having a child, and I’ve
opened up a business downtown. In that time, I’ve seen the momentum and the energy grow with each stage
in our life and | know that other people have testified to that. | would say also let’s talk about the energy in the
room tonight. There’s so much anticipation. There’s so much excitement for this project and as you go to
make this very important vote, | urge you to think about that and to vote yes.
President McCarthy
That concludes the public comment period. For the audience, | would tell you that the resolution is actually the
first thing on our old business which will come up in a few minutes. We have a couple of formalities to take
care of first but it comes up first.
PETITIONS — None
