Walgreen's inches forward

City Councils subcommittee on Public Works on Monday night spent another hour with representatives of the Massachusetts company that wants to build a Walgreen's drugstore in the downtown area and the details of what now seems to be an almost certain agreement that will find the city abandoning claim to about half of little-used Rowe Court continued to fall into place. Later, the entire Council agreed to schedule a required public hearing on the subject for the night of September 10.

Arista Development needs the land under the eastern half of the little loop "street" in order to site the proposed building near the intersection of Court Street and Main Street and allow ample parking for both Walgreen's and the nearby Landmark Inn. Three buildings — Winnisquam Printing, Laconia Pottery and a huge 19th century house that has most recently been used as an apartment building — will be purchased by Arista and then razed to make way for Walgreen's.

The entire length of Rowe Court cannot be discontinued by the city because it provides the only public access to both the Salvation Army thrift store at the bottom of the loop — near the Winnipesaukee River — and another old apartment house located behind the Package Plus building that fronts on Court Street.

Going into Monday night's meeting, the biggest remaining hang up appeared to be concerns with how traffic would exit a hotel parking area that is nearest the river. Public Works officials, as well as subcommittee Chairman Armand Bolduc, don't want to see extra traffic diverted onto the portion of Rowe Court that will remain a public way because it is really nothing more than a narrow alley-way and because its exit back onto Court Street — between Package Plus and the South Baptist Church — has poor sight lines.

Arista representative Scott Weymouth had been asked to see if he could get Landmark owner John Parisi to agree to slant the parking spaces by the river in the opposite direction so that cars would be exiting more toward the middle of the property but he reported on Monday that the hotel owner was not persuaded. "He has been very cooperative (about the whole project)," Weymouth said before adding that what the city was asking for was "not conducive to good customer service" because it would ask that patrons drive the long way around to double back to their parking area.

(Parisi owns the parking area in question but Arista has agreed to completely repave and landscape the area at its own expense in return for the hotel owner's cooperation on parking and traffic flow issues. Parisi has also agreed to give the city a 15-foot right-of-way along the river's edge for a riverwalk as part of his deal with Arista.)

Instead, Weymouth returned with a plan that calls for cars exiting the troublesome parking area being directed away from a right turn up the remaining portion of Rowe Court by a section of "scored" pavement that would make for a loud, bumpy ride, as well as by a sign directing "left turn only". Nothing short of a gate, the developer admitted, would present a foolproof way of preventing cars from turning right but he sought to impress upon councilors that an honest effort made to address their concerns. "I'm at the mercy of the council," he said.

Subcommittee members Bob Luther, Brenda Baer and Bolduc voiced no objections to the new scheme.

Aritsa has also agreed to place $25,000 in escrow that the city might use at a later date to connect the riverwalk easement that will run behind the hotel with Rotary Riverside Park on the other side of the Main Street bridge. Right now there is no way to make that connection because of a retaining wall that guards a significant change in elevation but City Manager Eileen Cabanel had been arguing that a future redesign of the bridge itself might make such a connection possible. And city officials were less than impressed with an Arista plan to reroute the end of the trail through the hotel/Walgreen's parking lot in order to connect up with Main Street.

Weymouth had explained at a previous meeting that that feature had been added at the request of Laconia Main Street program activists.

The other significant issue left hanging after Weymouth's last appearance before the subcommittee in late July was the matter of tree screening along the riverfront so that homeowners in the new Beacon Street West project on the other side of the river would not be looking at Walgreen's. City officials — in particular, Cabanel — wanted some assurance that the developer of that key downtown revitalization project (Chinburg Builders of Dover) was more-or-less happy with things before the city agreed to give up Rowe Court.

Weymouth said that he had spoken to Chinburg executives and he was confident that everyone was on the same page. "I'm not worried at all," he said.

The exact details of what will happen along the river will be decided when the project gets to the Planning Board for a very detailed site-plan review, Weymouth explained. There is a tall row of "stub grub" trees in that area now, he added, and Arista may not be allowed to remove them all and replace them with the evergreens that Chinburg would like to see because the riverfront is protected by shoreland regulations.

Though architectural review of the proposed Walgreen's project comes under the jurisdiction of the Planning Board, not City Council, Weymouth and his local attorney — Pat Wood — presented all members of council with a packet meant to illustrate the building will not "look like a typical Walgreen's". The architecture of the proposed structure is meant to mirror — with a brick archway theme — the Package Plus building that would be its neighbor to the west.

The Package Plus building was originally designed to house a General Motors automobile dealership.

Between now and Sept. 10, Wood and City Attorney Walter Mitchell will apparently continue to fine-tune the exact language of the agreement between the city and Arista. Cabanel noted that any final vote to abandon Rowe Court to Arista will be made conditional of the developer living up to their end of the deal.