City councilors to share State School development worries

LACONIA — With concerns growing among members of the City Council that politics could subvert efforts to redevelop the Laconia State School site in a way that would benefit the city, Executive Councilor Joe Kenney has agreed to attend the next City Council meeting.

The council formally asked Monday for Kenney to meet with them, and on Wednesday he said that he would plan to attend the next council meeting scheduled for Aug. 9.

Mayor Andrew Hosmer said he and members of the council are concerned that a rider in the state budget bill, which gives Gov. Chris Sununu and the Executive Council the unrestricted ability to dispose of the property, could result in land being unloaded without taking into consideration the city’s desire to see the 250-acre site developed to its maximum potential.

“We want to make it quite clear that we want to see a comprehensive plan” to redevelop the entire site, not just the land closest to North Main Street/Route 106, the mayor said.

Hosmer said the Lakeshore Redevelopment Planning Commission has been working for three years on plans to improve the infrastructure on the property, as well as to remove any hazardous materials, both of which are seen as critical to marketing the property to private developers.

Hosmer said if all the preparation and planning the commission has been doing is ignored, the result will not be as beneficial to the city, which is hoping to see a mixed-use development that includes housing and puts the property back on the city’s tax rolls.

Hosmer called the governor’s seeming willingness to disregard the commission’s hard work "a head-scratcher.”

Kenney said he too favors a holistic redevelopment plan.

“Whoever gets my vote will need to bring forward a plan that shows that they will be good stewards (of the property) as well as work with the city,” he said.

The Executive Council, which consists of five councilors representing different parts of the state, and the governor, is the body which ultimately must approve any purchase or sale of state property.

Kenney said he believes Sununu is pleased with the work the commission has been doing.

“But,” he added, “ultimately in this real estate climate there is a wish to try and move this along.”

The complex has been largely idle since the State School began to phase out in the 1980s before closing in the 1990s. The Department of Corrections used some of the buildings, but closed them in the early 2000s. Since then the state has been spending between $350,000 and $400,000 a year just to do minimal maintenance on the buildings and grounds, Kenney noted.

“It has a long way to go” before there will be any decision on the property, Kenney said. “There are a great many stakeholders in this kind of process, and a developer knows that they will have to work with those stakeholders.”

“It’s probably the most valuable piece of property in the city,” Hosmer said. “We don’t want to see the state skimming the cream off the top.”