Board of Aldermen — 2/21/16 Page 2
At Gateway Hills in our south end, we have attracted new companies and many jobs like DataGravity,
Plexxi, Benchmark and many others enterprises. Together, they have added over 3,000 jobs. Now we
are working with the Flatley Company towards a new R & D facility that will add another 500 jobs, a goal
we want to accomplish within the next 3 years.
| want to make Nashua a city that offers opportunity to people in all of our neighborhoods from the Tree
Streets to the North End, from Crown Hill to Sky Meadow, from Little Florida to Westgate Village. That is
why | am working and striving every day to energize our economy.
And again by working together we are creating a downtown that is more vibrant than ever. | want to
thank our many partners in this story of ongoing success: Great American Downtown, our Chamber of
Commerce, iUGO Nashua, City Arts, Positive Street Art, our Nashua Arts Commission, our Downtown
Improvement Committee, and hundreds of talented and community-minded citizens.
In the spring we held our 10 annual International Sculpture Symposium, and we restored the beautiful
wooden doors at the historic Hunt Building. In the summer we set up pianos on Main Street and
expanded the Nashua Farmers Market. We planted trees in the Tree Streets, and we helped relocate
the Picker Building Artists’ Collaborative elsewhere in the Millyard.
In September we put on our first outdoor Fall Music Festival, and in October we had our first annual food
truck festival. Towards year’s end we returned holiday lighting for our downtown, we held another
successful Holiday Stroll, and we celebrated Positive Street Art’s charming new movie mural on Main
Street. This past month we illuminated our downtown rail trail so that people can use this pedestrian
corridor safely and comfortably at all times of the day and night.
We know that the Nashua River is central to our identity. And over the next few months, in concert with a
talented landscape architecture and urban design firm, we will be developing a 21*' century plan for the
Nashua Riverfront.
We know that new housing and arts and music are keys to bringing more people of all ages to the heart
of our city. For housing, we are working to add 165, and now we think 200, new apartments to Franklin
Street with the mill-to-housing conversion going on there. Thanks to the work of BIDA, under the
leadership of Jack Tulley, we are adding 150 apartments as part of the Renaissance development on
Bridge Street, and we are looking to add more apartments in the Picker Building on the Nashua River
and still more on School Street.
And Nashua is rapidly becoming the live music destination for our entire region. We are already blessed
with a music scene which includes venues at the Riverwalk Cafe, Fody’s, and Dolly Shakers. In a few
months we will be presenting our first outdoor Spring Music Festival. Long term we are looking to
develop a downtown performing arts center. We are in the final stages of a feasibility study which is
looking at sites and a workable business plan. But | believe we may be able to add more music soon.
We are working on a plan, in concert with Great American Downtown and Ben Ruddock of Riverwalk
Cafe, to convert, at a modest cost, the historic Central Fire Station on Court Street to a music venue that
will draw up to 300 people to downtown on a regular basis. This venue could bring first rate musicians
performing Americana, indie, bluegrass and other diverse genres to downtown. We expect to be able to
tell you about the details of the plan in the coming months.
Every day | am inspired by the way that Nashuans have shown the character and the heart to come
together to attack the opioid addiction crisis. Right after | was sworn in, | established the Mayor’s Opioid
Task Force, whose members include our fire and police departments, public health, advocates and
professionals from the prevention and treatment communities, as well as other concerned citizens, to
develop a battle plan in the fight against opioid addiction. One important result has been that all the key
players in Nashua are now on the same team, talking and working together.
