NASHUA, NH – Mayor Jim Donchess held his Java With Jim event at JajaBelles Cafe on Main Street Wednesday morning. The gathering is one of his regular meetings that is open to the public to discuss issues with residents that the city is facing.
The sound of jackhammers working on the Factory Street paving project provided background noise for the meeting while crews were removing the Jersey barriers on Main Street. That activity was a perfect lead into the conversation with the Mayor.
As the red concrete barriers were being removed for the winter the Mayor began with a conversation about the positive impact of downtown dining. The city uses a program called Placer AI which uses anonymous cell phone data to measure activity. When looking at activity in the outdoor dining locations the mayor said, “Placer AI tells us that 140,000 people occupied the outdoor dining spaces for at least 10 minutes over the course of the season, from May until just recently.”
This led to a back and forth about traffic complaints and the prospect of the alderman renewing the program going forward. The mayor explained the positive impact on the quality of life and economics of the city. He acknowledged the complaints about single-lane traffic on Main Street and offered this explanation.
“This will continue to be a philosophical divide, you do have the basic philosophic question: Do you want a downtown that is designed to move traffic as quickly as possible, everything else being secondary? Or do you want a downtown that is more people-centric? I mean, that is the basic philosophic question. When we did the master plan for the city, supervised by a group of, I don’t know, a dozen, 15 citizens, they, in the master plan, said that the pedestrian space should be permanently expanded with sidewalks, basically, and that there should only be two travel lanes, one in each direction, as a permanent feature. So, that’s the basic philosophic question, and that’s going to be debated again, I’m sure,” said Donchess.
State Senator Cindy Rosenwald who was in the gathered crowd, reflected on the economic value to the city of a robust restaurant economy. “I serve on the Ways and Means Committee, which looks at all the revenues. One of our sources that’s actually doing well is the Rooms and Meals Tax, exceeding projections, not by a huge amount, but we have some that are. And 30% of that revenue gets returned to the cities and towns,” said Rosenwald. Hillsborough County and Nashua are beneficiaries of the increased revenue.
The improvements to the riverfront are part of the city’s economic development program to bring more people downtown which is connected to the summer dining space.
“If you want a retail base here, you’ve got to have people downtown. That involves getting people to live downtown and to come downtown. When we did a survey, 80% of the people who visit downtown, it’s restaurants and bars. That’s 80% of the draw,” said Donchess.
Parks are also important to draw activity. Using the Pacer AI data Donchess noted that, “Year to date, 90,000 people have gone to Greeley, 60,000 to Mine Falls, and 60,000 to Roby.” Those numbers do not include counts of young children who presumably do not carry cell phones. The waterfront park development is part of that strategy to add activity to the city center.
Housing also came up during the conversation. Hyperinflation and short supply impact Nashua. The Mayor reported on recent projects that have been completed. He also described the Nimco Property project as advancing with a potential for 350 units.
And he gave an update on the Elm Street School property.
“The Board of Aldermen decided that the city should put out a request for a proposal for three-quarters of the site, leaving the issue of Keefe undecided, and we received three very serious proposals for Elm Street, which will be 250, maybe 300 units. An interesting feature of that is that we had thought these developers would propose raising the Elm Street building because you can get more units if you do that. But, all three of these proposals involve keeping at least the original existing structure, the part that was built in 1939, and converting that to housing.”
The Mayor also discussed the artificial turf problem at Stellos stadium. Acknowledging that “it’s unfortunate, and the city should have done a better job on it.” The failure to set aside funds in the last budget cycle will be corrected this cycle and reserve funds will be applied for the estimated $1.2 million repair.
Property reassessments also were part of the conversation. The mayor described the issue this way, “There’s a state requirement that you do a revaluation every five, at a minimum every five years. Now this didn’t used to be the case, but the issue that is creating problems and hardship for quite a few people is that, as you pointed out, the value of residential property has risen so quickly. Between 2018, which was a revaluation year in 2022, residential values went up a little over 40%. So a house that had been worth $300,000 was now worth $420,000. And commercial property, malls, and offices did not go up an equivalent amount. In fact, the revaluation for them didn’t go up that much at all.”
Increased value does not necessarily mean increased taxes. The rate will be adjusted to reflect the percentage of the overall inventory value each property represents. New rates will be announced in the next few weeks.
An interesting morning of conversation and coffee with the Mayor.