Council defers sale of Old Police Station

The City Council is pondering whether the former police station on Church Street is worth more alive than dead. The Land and Buildings Committee, chaired by councilor Bob Hamel (Ward 5) last week recommended putting the building on the market, but the council, on the advice of City Manager Eileen Cabanel, agreed to defer a decision until the urban planners from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who visited the city in December, presented their general recommendations for land use in the downtown area.

The EPA team initially proposed demolishing the building in order to create a right-of-way linking Messer Street with downtown as part of a comprehensive reconfiguration of the traffic pattern and redevelopment of the riverbank in the city center.

The proposal recalled an earlier plan, inspired by a charette conducted by the Laconia Main Street program, that envisioned extending Hanover Street through the parking lot, which would become a site for commercial development, to connect with Messer Street. David Stamps, who participated in the charette, said the goal of the plan was to provide a direct route into downtown, alleviate the congestion leading to Veteran's Square and make better us of the land bordering the river.

Cabanel reminded Hamel and councilor Armand Bolduc (Ward 6), the two members of the Land and Buildings Committee present, of the EPA's proposal and told them that there has been little interest in the building since the police vacated it. Nevertheless, both preferred to sell the building and return it to the tax rolls.

Bolduc said that the site was not aligned with Messer Street and the slope of the land was not suited to a through street. On the other hand, he stressed that the location is "fantastic" and the the building, despite what Cabanel described as its "terrible" condition, was built to carry an additional story. The committee recommended offering the building for sale at $375,000, $20,000 more than its assessed value.

When the committee offered its recommendation to the council, Mayor Matt Lahey asked about the EPA's plan for re-routing downtown traffic. When Cabanel said that the EPA was only the most recent to propose demolishing the building to make way for a street leading downtown, Lahey replied "I don't want to pull a Mr. Grocer," referring to the city's decision to sell the now vacant property on Union Avenue — next to Laconia High School — that last housed Brooks Pharmacy only to find later that the land could be used in the reconstruction of LHS.

Councilor Henry Lipman (Ward 3) agreed that the city should avoid selling property that it might wish to buy back.