Swole idea: Fit Focus owners bid for parking garage

LACONIA — The city is finalizing a deal to sell the top two floors of the parking garage to a private business, but not the same developer who previously entered a purchase-and-sale agreement with the city a year and a half ago.

Instead, the city is negotiating with the owners of Fit Focus, an exercise business which takes up most of, and already owns, the ground level of the three-floor structure.

“We have an intent to purchase [letter] from a private business,” said City Manager Kirk Beattie. “I can’t release who it is, but it will be going to city council in June.”

Beattie declined to release any further details about the proposal, as council members hadn’t yet been briefed, but said the deal could move quickly once he gets clearance to add it to the upcoming meeting agenda.

“My hope is for [June] 9th, so we can do the public hearing in the second meeting in June and be done with this,” Beattie said.

Brandon Borghi, whose family owns Fit Focus as well as the five other storefronts on the 28,500-square-foot ground floor, confirmed his family is interested in acquiring the rest of the garage.

“We have been going back and forth with the city,” Borghi said. His family, doing business as 5623 Real Estate LLC, bought the ground floor of the building in 2017, according to city tax records.

“We weren’t interested in it at first,” Borghi said about the parking structure. “As we did business longer and longer in the area, we realized we need to do it,” he said, referring to purchasing the property to eliminate the complications of trying to maintain the property for his business and his tenants, while the city continued to own the top two floors. “We felt we needed to take our destiny in our own hands.”

Borghi declined to further elaborate on plans for the building until the transaction had been approved by city council.

This isn’t the first time a local entrepreneur proposed to take the garage off of the city’s hands. In November 2023, Kevin Hayhurst, a real estate developer and owner of the Paugus Bay Pub, offered to buy the top two floors in order to build a domed sporting facility.

At the time, he described a vision which included eight pickleball courts under the dome, as well as a multi-use turf field for many uses including soccer, lacrosse and flag football. He intended to leave the second floor for parking.

However, that deal was never consummated. Hayhurst said after he began to investigate the structure and work on a deal to buy it, he decided, “it was in the better interest for Fit Focus to take it over.”

Beattie confirmed the city and Hayhurst came to a mutual agreement to tear up their purchase agreement.

The parking garage has proven to be a persistent migraine for City Hall. First built in 1974 as part of the Urban Renewal project that re-built much of downtown, city council has found itself with a difficult decision in recent years. Decades of salt, snow and rain had corroded the exposed steel supports of the building, leading to the top floor being closed to vehicles. Five years ago, the city got an estimate of $10.8 million to build a new garage. The cost of making long-term repairs was $4.5 million, and even tearing it down would cost $2 million.

The city council has so far decided to do none of the above, preferring to spend lesser amounts each year on temporary patches to enable the second floor to continue to be used for parking.

Transferring the property into a private company’s hands would absolve the city of any of those future expenditures.

Although he wouldn’t discuss the details of the deal, Beattie said he supports the proposal coming to city council in June.

“I am looking to bring it forward to council,” Beattie said. “I think it would be a good use of the property, a good partnership.”