Riverbank House community going through business contraction

LACONIA — The Riverbank House recovery community is in the midst of a major downsizing.

The latest step is the closure of three businesses – the Karma Cafe, a gym and a yoga studio – in a building that is now to be converted into a 10-bedroom boarding house.

A special exception to allow the change of use in the building at 72 Church St., will come before the Zoning Board of Adjustment on Tuesday.

Riverbank House founder Randy Bartlett said in an interview Friday that Karma Cafe closed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and it doesn’t make economic sense to reopen it.

“Everybody loves it, but it wasn’t a very profitable business,” he said. “If we restarted it, we’d simply be losing money.”

He has sold four of Riverbank House’s nine buildings in the last year. This has created a need for more space for residents.

The Karma Cafe building can be put to better use to house people who had resided in one of the buildings that was recently sold, Bartlett said.

The restaurant provided a place of employment for Riverbank House residents while they worked on long-term recovery. Bartlett said he has also sold Riverbank’s Vantz Live Edge Furniture. It was purchased by a resident for $1.

A yoga studio and a gym were also closed.

“Coronavirus hit all of our small businesses,” Bartlett said. “They suffered enough that we had to make immediate changes.”

Evolving preferences in the recovery business have also hurt the operation, which focuses on long-term residential recovery support at a time when drug-assisted recovery has been attracting a lot of attention and funding.

“People are doing suboxone and methadone instead of heroin and our business started going down,” he said.

Bartlett said the number of Riverbank residents is now “in the high-20s or low-30s.”

In an interview about a year ago, Bartlett said there were 50 men in his recovery community.

City Planning Director Dean Trefethen said the Zoning Board, in considering the request for 72 Church St., will discuss how the change may impact city services and will look at the new, proposed layout of the building.

In his application for the special exception, Bartlett said demand for parking and city services will decline with the closure of the businesses that had operated in the building.