Special Bd. of Aldermen — 10/26/15 Page 3
Relative to the $4 million dollars, City staff and the New Market Tax Credit consultant have begun the process
to apply for and secure an allocation of a New Market Tax Credit, the expectation is that a letter of commitment
in the second quarter of 2019 would be forthcoming and cash would be available by the end of 2019. There is
a Memo in your packet that outlines this in greater detail.
Next steps — it is imperative that we continue to position ourselves and focus on obtaining the New Market Tax
Credit; to do that we need to be successful relative to the design and operations. We need to make sure that
we have those details finalized. We need to transition into the lead gift phase which is a quiet phase as |
previously outlined to secure somewhere between 60% and 70% of our target private charitable contributions.
And lastly we need to continue working with the Steering Committee. So there is a conceptual rendering of
what we are looking to achieve, and again this is just an artistic rendering and it is conceptual in nature, the
details may not stay the same but | wanted to remind folks of what we are working for relative to 201 Main
Street.
Before | finish out the presentation, | just want to make additional comments to help further clarify different
things or express some sentiments that had been brought up along the way.
First, people have been talking about the time and the timeliness of where we are at. | want to just remind
folks that we need to do this right and to do this right, we needed to take a step back, we needed to assess our
situation and we needed to do our due diligence. And in fact during the feasibility stage of the assessment, we
heard from the public and from the various stakeholders that it was vital that this Performing Arts Center was
“done right”. So that is the exact approach that we are taking. So we are taking a comprehensive approach,
we have hired a professional and we are looking to follow the advice of someone who has done sophisticated
fund raising type campaigns. Ultimately we need to do it right.
Another issue that we’ve heard that | wanted to make sure | made clear is the public and various stake holders
we’ve engaged have made it very clear that the City needs to step back and allow for the community to
actually take hold of this. We very much understand that the City cannot run this Performing Arts Center, we
are working towards a business model where that will not be the case . And even so much as having the
community support for the fund raising needs to be led by a bunch of community stake holders. So moving
forward in particular, | will be taking a step back, | won’t be so much the face of this initiative anymore, | will still
be there to support and to help bring the project forward, but it will be led by a group of various individuals
including Tracy Hall, President of the Chamber of Commerce, Judy Carlson who is with us, Marylou Blaisdell
who is us and then Trish Klee who is a member of the Board of Aldermen who has also stepped up and
worked very hard this summer to bring this project forward through the working group that brought this
feasibility study before you this evening.
A couple of other things that | want to make | make clear, this report will be on-line so | will put it up this
evening. | want to make sure that everyone understands that there will be a Facebook page developed now
and so there will be a way for us to produce information and put information out to the public. So the Nashua
PAC will go live this evening and that will be, again, a way for folks to either directly communicate with us
through a private message or for the differing steering committee to push information out to the general public.
Two last comments, | have a couple more comments, but two other comments | would like to make sure |
make; one — we need to continue to stay positive relative to this project. | bring this issue up because we are
engaging with some pretty high level individuals and organizations and they are pretty sophisticated and we
are courting them. If they get any sense of trepidation on our part, it is going to make our project more difficult
relative to the capital fund raising needs. So | want to encourage us all to continue thinking about and acting in
a positive manner relative to this project; | know it has been frustrating for everyone involved because of how
slow it has been. | totally recognize and | am very much aware of that and we will continue to be diligent but
move this expeditiously along as quickly as possible.
