Old North Main committee split on recommendations to council

LACONIA — A committee tasked with finding the best use of a city-owned property on Old North Main Street is set to make their recommendations to council.

The ad-hoc committee met for the final time on Thursday night, and is expected to share their endorsement in the coming weeks.  

The property, located at the intersection of Old North Main and Parade Road, is roughly 10 acres in size and essentially empty at present. The committee, comprising residents of Laconia and city staff, was tasked with opening proposals submitted to the city last year. 

The committee received four of them and, over the course of four meetings, heard and discussed that proposed by Lakes Region Community Developers — a potential 36-unit, multi-family development with rents tailored to workforce housing rates.

On Thursday evening, 13 community members gathered at the property and walked it over. It was raining hard and the ground was soaking wet. After about 20 minutes there, the group returned to City Hall downtown, where their fourth meeting drew more than 30 citizens to the council chambers.

Many of those in attendance expressed concerns regarding the potential development of the land. The most common concern dealt with that parcel being included in a performance zoning overlay years ago, with many of the residents of Old North Main telling the committee they hadn’t received notification during the process. Others worried the development of multi-family housing on the parcel could negatively affect property values, and that such a development wouldn’t match the character of the existing neighborhood.

“My concern is, if you’re trying to build a development in that area that’s going to meet what the neighborhood is about, I feel like if they don’t get the funding I’d be concerned that they would cut costs somewhere,” Shawn Cardinal of Laconia said. “What things would look like, what it would mean to keep the aesthetics of the Old North Main neighborhood. I’m not opposed to change, I don’t mind the change. I think something fitting the neighborhood — I do not think apartments in this area fit the neighborhood — single-family houses, things to that extent would.”

Additionally, members of the committee expressed concern regarding potential impacts to municipal infrastructure, and possible challenges associated with the forthcoming development of the State School property, which is located just across Parade Road. 

“One of the things I’m concerned about ... is the development of Laconia Village, with 2,000 possible residences across the street. Not necessarily the residences themselves concern me, but according to what I looked up for data, basically most residents, on average, have 1.83 cars,” James "Olie" Anderson said. “If you add those 2,000 residences with the almost 1,000 that are in the pipeline right now for Laconia that aren’t occupied yet, you’ve got about 3,000 residences coming online. At 1.83 cars we’re going to add 5,000 vehicles to our streets, the majority of them at Laconia Village. I don’t think our roads, specifically North Main Street starting at Oak Street to the library, can handle that many more cars — we’ve got a lot of infrastructure that’s going to have to be upgraded.”

Committee members are meant to submit thoughts and recommendations to the city council — which has ultimate decision-making authority — within the next two weeks. Councilors will need to decide if they wish to move forward with an agreement with Lakes Region Community Developers, if they’d like to consider other options, or if they’d prefer not to take action on the parcel in the immediate future at all. 

“I think the reason why my recommendation on this is that we proceed to [a proposal] process, and I’m happy to talk more about what I think that could look like, the reason I’m leaning that direction is that we already have an affordable housing problem in the city, and that has a negative impact every day on our economy, on our quality of life and on the working families who could be living in the city rather than somewhere else,” Jason Sproul said. “The size of this development is not huge, the density is comparable to the surrounding neighborhood, the bigger concern is the State School property — and I have deep, deep reservations about that — I think it could be a huge asset to the city, I think it could also be a gigantic disaster, but I don’t think we should hold up making a small but meaningful improvement for working families by proceeding with an appropriate residential that, performance zoning or not, it’s the same density as the surrounding neighborhood.”

Catherine Bowler, executive director of Laconia Housing, illustrated the need within the community for housing that’s affordable. 

“We have a waiting list of 911 people looking for housing — in the last month, it was 28. Every month, it’s between 20 and 35 people looking for housing that we get new applications for,” Bowler said. “A lot of them are living within multiple homes, so they’re staying at somebody’s house right now that probably isn’t really big enough to support them. Some of them are truly homeless, we take applications from anyone who applies for housing, so some of them are truly homeless right now and have no place to live.”

Between 2020 and 2024, Bowler said, many apartments in Laconia sold on the open market, and lots of people lost their housing in that period. 

“A lot of inventory was lost during that period of time,” she said. “Laconia Housing used to operate at a 99% voucher rate and we are currently at about 82% — we cannot use all of the vouchers that we have available because there simply is not enough stock in Laconia to house people.”

Though members of the committee will submit their recommendations in writing, councilors who attended the meeting likely have a general understanding of where committee members stand: most agreed the timing and location may not be right, some said they’re open to considering the proposal made by LRCD along with others, potentially through another, more focused proposal process, and some said they’re interested in moving forward.

“I’m not convinced, right now, I’m not feeling bullish on this to the point where I’m saying, ‘Jeez, the council’s got to act on this right away’. I don’t think there’s enough information, I think there are too many questions right now that have been posed that we don’t have specific answers to,” Mayor Andrew Hosmer said Thursday. “On the flip side of that, if we don’t do something in the next few years for workforce housing, we’re going to be in tough shape.”