A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, May 2, 2017, at 7:00 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman David Schoneman led in the Pledge
to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 12 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman McGuinness,
Alderman Cookson and Alderman LeBrun were recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
COMMUNICATIONS
MOTION BY ALDERMAN WILSHIRE THAT ALL COMMUNICATIONS BE READ BY TITLE ONLY
MOTION CARRIED
From: Brian S. McCarthy, President, Board of Aldermen
Re: Special Board of Aldermen Meeting
MOTION BY ALDERMAN WILSHIRE TO ACCEPT AND PLACE ON FILE
MOTION CARRIED
PRESENTATION
Presentation on Performing Arts Center Phase Il Feasibility Study
Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development
We are here this evening to close out a project that started before my arrival where we engaged Duncan Webb
to undertake a Phase | Feasibility Study. That Phase | concluded in the summer, early fall of 2016. Then we
started Phase II, which is the report you are about to hear this evening which | will now turn over to Duncan to
go over more detail on.
Duncan Webb
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to come and present our the results of our work this evening. It’s been
a long and involved process. We've been in your community a number of times over the past year and a half
to complete this work. We had public meetings, group meetings, town hall sessions and collected a
tremendous amount of very valuable information from your community. This evening I’m going to remind you
of the work we did back in the first phase, mostly in 2016, and then work through the second round of work
which is a combination of business planning that I’ve undertaken with my firm and physical planning which was
done by Scott Aquilina and his firm, Bruner/Cott.
| am a management consulting to people who build, renovate and operate performing arts facilities. | have
bene doing this work for 30 years around the country working for cities and developers, art organizations and
educators for buildings of various sizes and types. | started my practice in 1997, and we just started project
390. We come into a community, speak truth to power and then get out of the way.
The idea of arts facilities in Nashua has been around for some time. In fact we worked in one of the previous
studies ten years ago. We were a subconsultant to an architect. Since that last round of work, there’s been a
lot of development, cultural and economic and community development in Nashua. There has been the sense
on the part of leadership that new cultural facilities might have a catalytic effect on Nashua. Our job was to
establish whether not such an idea is feasible.
