Downtown merchants see garage remodel as positive step

LACONIA — For many downtown merchants, the city council’s recent decision to move forward on the downtown parking garage remodel is a long awaited step in the right direction.

“It’s well long overdue,” said Richard Batstone, co-owner of Wild Women's Studio & Gifts. “The city, in its infinite wisdom, decided to give 18 parking spots to the condos next door, so we need more parking and it needs to happen soon.”

Wild Women's has been in the downtown area for 18 years, almost as long as the parking garage itself has been an issue.

“We’ve had a parking garage for 20 years, it just hasn’t been usable,” said Link Fournier, a vendor at Laconia Antique Center. Fournier cited the structure’s lack of maintenance as a primary concern. “They did band aid maintenance,” he said. “We still can’t use the top floor.”

Of the parking garage’s 250 spaces, only 110 are usable due to structural problems. Security is also a concern regarding the garage.

“Back a few years ago, there were a lot of complaints from the hairdressing school,” Batstone recalled. “None of the young ladies or men that go there wanted to park there because their cars got broken into so often.”

Brandon Borghi is a major proponent of remodeling the garage, which sits on top of his gym, Fit Focus. “I think they’d love to have their car under covered parking, but they just don’t feel comfortable under there," he said of students of Empire Beauty School. "Like I said, look at it, it’s not well lit, it has a certain reputation throughout the years,” Broghi said. “With the top being closed it’s not policed very well.”

Borghi believes that investing in the property will encourage more people to use the garage.

“I think it would be used more often if it had more lighting,” Borghi stated.

Cindy Tomlinson, owner of New Leaf, echoed the need for security improvements.

“If they do make the parking garage part of the plan and renovate it, it has to feel welcoming and safe,” she said. Tomlinson, like other business owners, hopes the extra spaces will alleviate some of the parking shortage plaguing the downtown area.

“A lot of the parking right downtown is two hours only and a lot of things require more than two hours that people are doing downtown now,” Tomlinson said. “I do workshops, and I have to have people set their timers and go move their cars. That’s not the best way to do business.”

Cassandra Archibald, the owner of Galleria Salon and Day Spa, also saw the renovation as necessary.

“It would be wonderful to get the extra parking going again,” Archibald said. She went on to address skepticism of the remodel directly. “What I hear is ‘we've been here 20 years’, and ‘been there, tried that,’ a lot,” she said. “Sometimes you have to try things again. To reinvent the wheel, you don’t have to fully reinvent it, you just have to re-look at it."