City staff select contractor to facilitate new Laconia Master Plan

LACONIA — City staff selected Resilience Planning & Design to assisting them in developing a new master plan.

Resilience Planning & Design is based in Plymouth. 

“They had absolutely wonderful references, and the products that they produced were incredible,” Planning Director Rob Mora said during a city council meeting Aug. 25. “We can’t wait to see what they do for us.”

City planners put out a request for proposals on July 1, and received eight submissions. They went through a scoring process, conducted by Mora, Assistant Planning Director Tyler Carmichael and Housing and Economic Development Director Joia Hughes. 

The purpose of a municipal master plan is to establish goals, objectives and actions for land use, economic development, housing, transportation and community facilities. In the fiscal year 2025-26 budget, councilors appropriated $100,000 to see a new one completed. 

The 2018 master plan, the most recent to be adopted by the city, was shorter than Resilience’s proposal, Mora said. That document is brief, just 18 pages long. By comparison, the 2007 master plan was 128 pages long. 

“After we scored all of them, we then called all of the references,” Mora said. “We called Hampton, Bar Harbor and Dover. We got extremely good reviews from the contractor that we were doing the check on, so we ended up giving them a call, saying that we had selected them.”

Mora said his staff had an initial meeting with the company to go over what they’re looking for, setting the basis for future discussions. There will be a kickoff meeting with city councilors and land use board members at 6 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 6, at the Belknap Mill. They’re also going to create a website and a Facebook page for the effort, in order to provide regular updates to members of the public. 

Ward 1 Councilor Bruce Cheney told Mora he’d like to be assured the upcoming State School development would be included in the master plan, and Mora said it would be. Cheney has filed for mayor in the upcoming municipal primary on Tuesday, Sept. 9.

“That’s going to be almost a village in itself in Laconia, and it will definitely be very prominent in the master plan, to get all the data points for that,” Mora said. 

The new master plan may prompt the rewriting of municipal ordinances, including those pertaining to performance zoning, in order to ensure they’re aligned with the existing character of neighborhoods in the city, Mora told councilors. 

“The current master plan that we have was adopted in 2018, and it does not reflect the current challenges that are facing the city today,” Mora said Monday. “Our department has not only heard from councilors and land use boards and residents and business owners, but we’ve heard from all of them with all of their concerns. It’s going to be very important for us to do this master plan and take all those inputs that we’ve heard from them, and put that together to really create a master plan that works for us.”

Gary Dionne, Planning Board Chair Charlie St. Clair, Patrick Wood, John McArdle, Jennifer Ulrich, Ward 3 City Councilor Eric Hoffman and Mora comprise the city’s Master Plan Steering Committee. St. Clair, who also serves Laconia in the Statehouse as a Democrat, has filed for the interim mayor appointment, as Andrew Hosmer resigned the post at the Aug. 25 council meeting to accept the city manager's job in Lebanon.

Mora is the committee’s chair, and can only vote in the event of a tie.

Their selections are included in a staff report attached to the agenda for the next planning board meeting, which is scheduled for at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2, at City Hall downtown.