Work on Boat Launch resumes

The state-owned public boat launch on the Winnipesaukee River at the foot of Water Street will open by the end of June at the latest, but weather permitting likely sooner. It will provide easy access to Lake Winnisquam.

Alan Moody, who is managing the $1.4-million project for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department said yesterday that he plans to meet shortly with M.E. Latulippe Construction of Ashland, the contractor, after which he will have a better sense of when work will be complete. Work, which began last August, was halted between November and April when eagles roost and feed on the river. Moody said that the wharf, pavement, landscaping and fencing remain to be finished, along with some electrical work.

The facility will be built on two acres, excluding the site of a brick building from the former sewage plant, at the foot of Water Street, between Boulia-Gorrell Lumber Company and the old Laconia waste treatment plant, now a pump station for the Winnipesaukee River Basin Project (WRBP). The city contributed 1.43-acres, which had served as storage space for the Department of Public Works, to the project in return for the value of a new storage building being erected adjacent to the Public Works garage on Messer Street. The balance of the land, a little more than half an acre, was transferred by the WRBP.?

The launch site will provide parking spaces for 31 vehicles with boat trailers, two of which will be accessible to handicapped vans, and five cartop carriers, including one handicapped accessible space. There will be two parking spaces reserved for official vehicles. Altogether 1.37-acres will be paved, leaving 30-percent of the site in grass.

The 30-foot wide boat ramp with a six-foot seasonal dock will be cut into the riverbank at an angle facing downstream and will be flanked on either side by retaining walls offering moorings. The entire facility will be fenced and reached through a gate on Water Street.

The project was inspired by the late Fred Toll, who as a city councilor, grew concerned about plans to disturb the tranquillity of Ahern State Park by siting a trailered boat launch near the beaches. Toll suggested the Water Street site as an alternative.

The project gained momentum in the summer of 2004 when Sarge's Country Store at Mosquito Bridge closed one of the two boat ramps by which the general public could reach Lake Winnisquam. As pressure on the only remaining ramp at Martel's Sport Shop on Winnisquam Avenue mounted, Ralph Langevin closed it. Langevin threatened to keep the ramp shut unless then Governor Craig Benson came to Laconia and undertook to build state-owned public ramp within a year. Benson, accompanied by other state officials, came within a week. Amid much fanfare, the governor promised Langevin that the state would build a ramp within a year and the process got underway. Four years later the work will be completed.