Motorcycle Week group looks to start picking up the pieces, planning next rally

LACONIA — The Laconia Motorcycle Week Association is hoping to soon start putting the pieces back together after a severe fire destroyed their offices on Christmas. But it’s going to be a long process, Charlie St. Clair, the organization’s executive director, said Thursday.

The two-alarm fire destroyed the association’s files, office equipment, its inventory of Motorcycle Week merchandise, and historic memorabilia. St. Clair said he did not expect he and Deputy Director Jennifer Anderson would be able to start combing through the rubble until this week.

St. Clair estimated that losses due to the fire could amount to $300,000.

But St. Clair said the recovery could be difficult and complicated because the limits on the association’s insurance policy may not be adequate to cover the full expenses of the claim.

“We were underinsured,” he said.

An electrical problem is suspected to have started the fire that had likely burned for hours before it was discovered by two motorists who were driving past the building at 1105 Union Ave., Fire Chief Kirk Beattie said last week.

One piece of good news, St. Clair said, was that Anderson had backed up all the association’s computer files, so those can be re-created once the organization is able to acquire new computers.

Since the fire, many people have reached out to offer help and support, he said.

The Northeast Motor Sports Museum has offered to let the association use space at their building on Route 106 in Loudon for as long as necessary, and a longtime Motorcycle Week patron has set up a GoFundMe page in the hopes of raising $75,000.

Once St. Clair and Anderson are able to get re-established in temporary quarters, they will resume the planning for next year’s Motorcycle Week, which is tentatively scheduled for June 12-20.

“Lurking in the background is the virus,” St. Clair said, noting it will be a challenge to plan for the event, not knowing this far in advance what the status of the coronavirus pandemic will be in six months.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll have some semblance of a rally,” he said, acknowledging: “It may be like this year’s,” where restrictions were in place to prevent large crowds from congregating in Weirs Beach, the event’s traditional epicenter.

St. Clair said he and Anderson want to resume working on the 2021 edition of Rally News, a magazine which contains information about the races and other activities during the nine-day event, as well as advertisements from the event’s sponsors and many local businesses.

He said the association still plans to have an information booth at Daytona Bike Week, in Florida, which is scheduled for March 5-14. However, because of the pandemic, motorcycle enthusiast trade shows which normally take place early in the year have been canceled.

The GoFundMe page to benefit the association was set up Wednesday by Paul Cote, of Amesbury, Massachusetts, a longtime rally patron and founder of Check Twice for Motorcycles. As of mid-afternoon Thursday, nearly $1,000 had been collected, including donations from Mayor Andrew Hosmer and City Councilor Henry Lipman.

“As someone who has worked with the Bikers Helping Bikers charities for over 20-plus years, and being a Brother, a friend and Rally Patron of the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association for decades (and) after seeing the news about the fire at their headquarters, we all want to do something to help because that what’s our motorcycle community does,” Cote wrote on the GoFundMe page. “We stand up for each other and help those in times of need. Now is the time.”

St. Clair said he now knows what it is like to be a fire victim.

“It’s very personal. It hits you hard,” he said Thursday.