The road ahead: Council makes headway with redevelopment projects | News

“A unanimous vote like that may be a testimony to the truth that numerous work has been put into that and the collaboration has been profitable,” Mayor Charlene Lovett mentioned in elation instantly following the vote.

The council additionally voted unanimously in a separate decision to approve an 11-year tax aid exemption for the Peterson constructing to facilitate a developer’s venture to renovate the vacant former mill constructing to offer 80-90 market-rate flats.

The assembly was capped off when the council moved forward to improve town’s emergency dispatch gear whereas persevering with to discover a regional partnership with Newport or different cost-saving fashions.

Nice Avenue revitalization receives approval

With Wednesday night time’s vote, town council delivered to fruition a plan for Nice Avenue that has been mentioned within the metropolis for practically 60 years: to reroute business vans from the downtown to various routes.

The authorized revitalization venture will convert Nice Avenue from two-way to one-way southbound site visitors and enhance the ratio of pedestrian house on Nice Avenue by 50%. The proposed design contains plans for a bicycle lane, improved lighting and signage, and expanded pedestrian walkways that may accommodate foot site visitors, outside eating, seating and art work. The road is also closed to site visitors periodically for particular occasions, like road festivals or a farmer’s market.

New timber would supply locations of respite alongside the road, assist scale back water runoff and enhance the visible aesthetic of the road.

Industrial vans which have beforehand used Nice Avenue as a thru-way can be diverted to various routes that circumvent the downtown.

Councilors and residents in attendance voiced help for the venture, saying it may present a long-sought catalyst to draw customers, vacationers and new residents to town.

“I hear feedback generally that we have to refill the downtown buildings earlier than we put money into ourselves,” mentioned Councilor Erica Sweetser. “However on this chicken-or-the-egg [scenario] we all know the fitting reply this time.”

Sweetser identified that this venture will present the missing assets mandatory to draw new companies to these retailer fronts. The venture plans to extend general parking downtown by an estimated 100 further areas by working with non-public house owners to entry their underutilized heaps.

The Nice Avenue revitalization was a key goal within the metropolis’s 2017 Grasp Plan, which sought to make Claremont’s metropolis heart a vacation spot for purchasing, strolling, eating, cultural occasions and social interplay. Rerouting business truck site visitors would additionally considerably scale back noise disturbances and shield buildings from injury brought on by the vibrations of passing vans.

A number of circumstances factored into the timing of this venture. A large chunk of the $4.8 million bond will cowl the substitute of water and sewer strains that run beneath Nice Avenue. Metropolis Supervisor Ed Morris mentioned in earlier discussions of the venture that it makes extra fiscal sense to tie the Nice Avenue reconstruction to the water improve, for the reason that metropolis will already be paying to tear open the road and repave.

The town additionally has three bonds concurrently retiring this 12 months, so town goals to offset the price of the revitalization bond to forestall a rise to the present tax fee.

Council approves tax aid request for Peterson constructing

The council authorized an 11-year tax aid exemption beneath New Hampshire RSA 79-E for the Peterson constructing, {a partially} renovated however nonetheless vacant former mill constructing at 29 Water Avenue.

Chinburg Properties, a improvement firm based mostly in Newmarket, is beneath settlement to accumulate 29 Water St. to create a residential constructing with 80 to 90 market fee flats in Claremont’s historic mill district. Nearly all of models could be studio or one-bedroom flats, with two-bedroom flats comprising about one-fourth of the combination.

RSA 79-E is a state-created tax incentive program created in 2016 to encourage renovations or upgrades to business or residential properties by permitting the proprietor to proceed paying taxes on the property’s pre-renovation worth for a five- to 11-year interval.

The council’s approval signifies that Chinburg would solely pay taxes on the Peterson constructing’s present assessed worth of $753,700 for the subsequent 11 years.

On the council assembly on Aug. 26, Chinburg mentioned that these state-based tax packages are key elements to financing these mill renovation tasks. Chinburg additionally plans to hunt federal historic tax credit for the Peterson constructing venture, which have been additionally used to fund the constructing’s renovation in 2006.

The Peterson constructing was initially renovated in 2006 as a part of the broader Monadnock Mills venture that used federal stimulus to repurpose the district’s shuttered historic manufacturing buildings. The venture included the renovation of 21 Water Avenue, which homes Pink River Know-how’s headquarters and The Widespread Man. The Peterson constructing continues to be owned by Sugar Mills Redevelopment, who meant to develop the constructing into condominiums, although the venture stalled.

Chinburg Properties President Eric Chinburg, who sought town council’s approval on preliminary gadgets Wednesday, mentioned he has been focused on creating the constructing for a lot of years. Since 1996 Chinburg has renovated 17 former mill buildings into residential flats in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The corporate sometimes funds the tasks by federal and state tax packages that incentivize the repurposing of outdated or historic buildings to spur financial improvement.

Bond to replace emergency gear strikes ahead

The Claremont Metropolis Council unanimously authorized a bond of as much as $1 million to exchange town’s outdated and outdated emergency communications gear, a lot of which is as much as 20 years outdated and now not serviceable.

Metropolis Supervisor Ed Morris mentioned town continues to be in dialogue with Newport about the potential of a joint-dispatch heart, which may doubtlessly yield price financial savings for each municipalities. However the present state of Claremont’s gear is just too nice a public security threat to delay.

“I don’t need to kick the can ready to see if the regional dispatch system occurs or not,” Morris instructed the council. “I believe we have to transfer ahead to exchange the gear wanted for our system.”

The bond won’t turn into out there till January, so Claremont will proceed to discover a partnership with Newport. Morris instructed the Eagle Instances on Friday that the present conversations with Newport are nonetheless in “their infancy stage” however renew a dialogue initiated a couple of years earlier by former Claremont Metropolis Supervisor Ryan McNutt, who terminated his employment with town in 2019.

The town can even proceed looking for grant funding alternatives to imagine a number of the price, Morris instructed the council. The town has to this point been unable to seek out out there funds by the federal Coronavirus Support, Aid, and Financial Safety (CARES) Act. The Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) knowledgeable Claremont that funds weren’t out there for dispatch gear and town doesn’t anticipate a surplus from the $331,000 obtained for payroll safety.

Claremont Police Chief Mark Chase mentioned the vast majority of the gear upgrades contain base radios and the principle communications interface. Cellular radios, akin to car radios, are comparatively newer and have been nicely maintained.

However the principle radios and gear are so outdated that their substitute components are now not manufactured. Chase mentioned that town has gathered sq. components from buying used gear that different dispatch stations “throw away.”

“So I don’t need to say the sky is falling [at the moment], however we’re behind the instances,” Chase instructed the council.

Claremont Hearth Chief Bryan Burr mentioned the hearth division’s radio has two frequencies, together with one for speaking to and from the fireground. However the division not often makes use of the fireground communication frequency as a result of it wants the upgrades in order that such communications might be recorded.

The town will mix the purposes for the gear bond and the $4.8 million bond for the Nice Avenue revitalization, which the council additionally authorized on Wednesday. The bonds will stay separate genuinely, however combining them into one software saves town between $5,000 to $15,000 in further software charges, Morris instructed the council.

Some gear purchases could hinge on how Claremont strikes ahead with its dispatch companies. Along with a doable regional dispatch, town may take into account increasing its means to contract dispatch companies to different municipalities.

Chase mentioned that Claremont offers some dispatch companies to Cornish, Lempster, Unity and the county sheriff’s division, although Claremont is at the moment at its most capability to think about further communities.

Sullivan County is likely one of the solely counties in New Hampshire that doesn’t have a regional dispatch operation, in line with Sullivan County Supervisor Derek Ferland.

Sullivan County tried to create a central county dispatch greater than eight years in the past, which might have served all of the townships within the county, however the initiative died from irreconcilable disputes between municipalities.

Ferland mentioned the communities failed to seek out settlement on the situation of the station and how you can apportion the funding.

The county initially sought to put the middle in Claremont, however some townships contested the proposal, wanting the middle in their very own group.

Municipalities additionally fought over how you can distribute the burden that will fall onto the county tax fee, Ferland mentioned. Whereas some price would have been apportioned in line with every municipality’s name fee, that mannequin alone couldn’t recoup the required income. Some bigger cities wished a larger funding portion put onto the tax fee, whereas smaller cities protested shouldering extra burden.

“Our [county] place is that we’ll assist [to establish one] however the request has to come back from the municipalities,” Ferland mentioned. “This isn’t going to be a county-level venture. But when the municipalities want the county’s assist not directly we’ll help them.”