Special Bd. of Aldermen — 10/26/15 Page 2
The rest of my conversation is going to talk about the $2.5 million dollar capital campaign. The purpose of this
feasibility study is to talk with members of the community that the capital campaign work group identified as
people who are capable of making a gift to the capital campaign, hopefully interested in supporting the capital
campaign and are people that are known in the community and decision makers and influencers. We wanted
to learn from them what is it about the Performing Arts Center that is particularly interesting to them that might
be particularly inspiring to them to make a charitable contribution and then what are their concerns. When you
go out to the community for a capital campaign you would like to Know that in advance so that you can address
some of those concerns and have some answers when people have questions.
It was also to help us identify what is a capital campaign goal that we feel is feasible and then to develop a
capital campaign strategy. And | just want to be clear that a capital campaign for those of you who do a lot of
work with non-profits understand the annual fund and | had one Board Member that | worked with once on a
non-profit say the annual fund is just like housework, it is never done. That is the fund raising that you do year
after year to support the programming, on-going and it is often done through special events like 5K road races
or dinners or things like that. That is not a capital campaign, a capital campaign is usually a time limited
project that has very specific outcomes and goals and is funding very specific things such as a new building or
an endowment that is going to be a big leap forward for the organization. Or, as in the case of this entity, is
going to help fund the startup of this Performing Arts Center.
What we found in going out, | had 23 interviews, | and my colleague Amy Lockwood from Full Circle
Consulting, we had 23 interviews in total and talked with a total of 30 people, business people, people from
downtown, people active in the community. What was most exciting is probably the same reason why people
in this room are excited about the Performing Arts Center, that people are excited about live performances in
downtown, real excited about having a place where they can just come downtown, go out to eat and then go a
live performance. They are hoping that the Performing Arts Center will help bring a lot of energy and
revitalization to downtown Nashua and that the combination of a Performing Arts Center and a revitalized
downtown will be good for the City as a whole and will be particularly attractive to businesses that are working
very hard to attract and retain high quality work force.
So some of the concerns that we discovered, this one is not a surprise to me, long-term sustainability, they just
want to make sure that if it is built it will be here in 20 years right; which is a very typical concern of any capital
campaign project. If you build it, how are you going to pay for it in 20 years? Another one is by organizational
structure there was a lot of concern out in the community that this was going to be completely City-run, that the
City is going to hire employees to run the facility and there was a notable level of distrust of the City’s capacity
to do that. When | talked about your plan to have it created as a 501(C)(3) and have that organization be the
entity that is going to manage this Performing Arts Center, people were relieved and felt more enthusiastic
about it.
The third one was parking and that | would divide into two things in terms of concerns, one is that there is a
perception that there is not enough parking in downtown and | think that is some marketing on the part of the
Performing Arts Center that in reality, people who are coming downtown or to a place for a several hour kind of
night out, are more willing to walk 5 to 7 minutes from a parking garage than maybe you are if you are just
trying to hit a store and run in and run out. But the other one was something | didn’t anticipate was that there is
a perception that the parking garages are not safe. As a result people said “Sure there is parking, but |
wouldn’t park there”. | think that is something very tangible that can be fixed it is not obviously a capital
campaign thing, but that is for you to know that that is an issue.
Finally there were questions about the retail space, what is going to go in there. This could be because |
simply described it as retail space and most people jumped to the conclusion that it was going to be a clothing
store or something like that and expressed concern that whoever is securing and bringing in that business to
take that first floor space — that it would be empty space is the concern. | think that the sooner we can figure
that out, the better.
