Iconic downtown building to become real estate hub

LACONIA — One of the city's most visible locations has new owners and, for the first time in more than 40 years, it won't be used for jewelry retail. 

The building at 520 Main St., which was the site of Sawyer's Jewelry since 1979, has been purchased by Legacy Home Group, a real estate agency affiliated with Keller Williams Lakes & Mountains. The paperwork was signed on Thursday morning.

Legacy Home Group, with managing partners Kara Chase and Corilyn Tessier, is a new but growing company. It only recently celebrated its third anniversary, yet already includes 10 full-time agents, as well as other support staff.

Chase and Tessier had been operating out of an office in the Village West complex in Gilford, though they said they outgrew that space almost immediately. Chase said her husband called one day when he was driving through downtown Laconia and suggested the Sawyer's building – "I said no. No, no no," she recalled, but she brought the idea to Tessier, and to Reuben Bassett, who recently joined Legacy as a commercial real estate agent. Both of them liked the idea, to her surprise, and that kicked off a string of events that concluded with the closing transaction on Thursday.

The building, with its two-story, Romanesque facade, is among the first things people see after crossing the bridge into downtown Laconia from points south.

"It is the entrance to downtown," Chase said.

Though the company is new, the people behind it have a long view of the region.

"We were both born and raised here," Chase said about herself and Tessier. They think about their company in long terms, and said their clients tend to do so as well, considering the effects that a purchase or sale will have on subsequent generations of their family. Hence the brand "Legacy," which they use for the three areas of their business: Legacy Home, Legacy Luxury, and Legacy Commercial.

During the pandemic, the company converted to a virtual and remote way of doing business. It would be possible to continue to do so, but, said Tessier, that wasn't the kind of business they wanted to run. They wanted a space large enough for all of their staff, and having such a visible location that would catch the attention of people traveling by was too much to pass up.

"Having a place for our agents to come, our clients to come, on their way to all the other cool things downtown, is exactly what we were looking for," Tessier said. "We can do everything virtually right now, but our team wanted exactly this opportunity."

Tessier said the office will be renovated with an eye toward being welcoming to both serious real estate shoppers as well as the merely curious, will offer space to other partners such as lenders, and will actively participate in the city's festivals and decoration competitions.

"Yes, it is a real estate office, but it is much more than that," Tessier said of their vision.

Plans for the renovation call for an updating of the building, but the exterior will pay homage to its decades as the only Rolex dealer in the area.

Robert Sawyer, who flew in from Florida to finalize the deal, said it felt odd to hand the building off to someone else. After doing the final walk-though on Thursday morning, he said, he instinctively checked to make sure the doors were locked before leaving. "I did that for so long!"

Sawyer moved the jewelry business to the 520 Main St. location in 1979, relocating it from the corner of Main and Canal streets. He also owned several other commercial real estate buildings, leasing out storefronts as the downtown's fortunes rose and fell over the years. He said there's a satisfaction to divesting of the building at a time when things are decidedly looking up for the city's core.

"I'm just excited," Sawyer said. "When Kevin (Sullivan) and I started in downtown Laconia, we wanted to leave downtown in better shape than when we came, and I think that's been the case."