Reports of Nashua's demise have been greatly exaggerated
By JIM CHIAVELLI
Sun Staff
Meghan Monks serves Juli Andreatti of Pennsylvania and
Mark Thompson of Merrimack, N.H., at the sidewalk cafe of
Martha's Exchange in downtown Nashua, N.H.
City planners say giving people a reason to linger on the
sidewalks was a key step in Nashua's revival.
sun/cheryl a. miller
NASHUA, N.H. -- "Downtown Nashua has been pronounced dead at least three, no, four times in the last 20 years," laughed Mike Valuk, president of the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce.
Valuk then ticked off five instances in which people called the downtown irretrievably gone, and laughed again, acknowledging that the count got out of hand. Every time, reports of the demise have been greatly exaggerated, he said.
Today, downtown Nashua has a thriving Main Street of 14 restaurants, retail shops and offices, surrounded by bustling side streets that add to the eclectic, anti-chain store mix. On and off Main Street there are unique or hard-to-find business, like a tobacconist, a cobbler, a pool-table-supply shop; the more mainstream jewelers, banks and clothiers; and enough home-furnishing stores to fill the living rooms in every new house in this growing city of 84,000.
"This downtown has a lot of luck," said Valuk, the chamber's top executive for 16 years.
If it's luck, it's because Nashua made its own.
The key, said Alan Manoian, the city's downtown development specialist, has been not what's going on inside the stores as much as what's happening outside.
"You make or break your downtown based on the experience on the sidewalks," he said. "I am a preacher, and this is the sermon: You start on the sidewalks."
Building on a base
Manoian, the city's first downtown coordinator, was hired in the fall of 1994 -- after a stint as coordinator of the Main Street Program in Lowell -- to help revive the half-mile Main Street stretch between Library Hill and Hollis Street, and the downtown penumbra of two blocks to the east and west.
"There was really no program set at that point," he said. "The thing was wide open I had great autonomy, a lot of support -- but I had no budget."
Manoian found "a downtown that was just very quiet, and, if you will, very functional, utilitarian. The downtown Nashua experience was this: I have to go to downtown Nashua. I have to find a parking spot close to where I'm going. I park my car, walk into that place I'm going to, then get in my car and leave.
"It was not a place to come and linger."
What the downtown did have going for it, Manoian said, was a core of about 20 "multigenerational, family-owned businesses."
"We still had businesses here that had deep roots, deep connections with the traditional customer base," he said. "They have an intense love and commitment to the downtown, because their families stayed here at great risk to themselves, to the next generation, they stuck it out." Among those, he said, were Bill and Chris Fokas, owners of the brewpub-restaurant Martha's Exchange on Main Street.
"They were literally visionaries," Manoian said.
Their father owned a candy store at the same location, and "in 1989, they had the vision and guts" to buy the 124-year-old building and restore it, creating a restaurant and function hall. Valuk cited Martha's along with Alec's Shoe, Goodale's bicycle shop and the Persian Rug Gallery as some of the "really solid merchants" who stuck by downtown Nashua through thick and thin. "They were the glue," he said.
When Manoian came into Nashua, he argued that "we reposition this whole place called downtown Nashua so that it becomes an alternative to the mall -- it becomes a place to go and linger and spend time."
The downtown, he said, needed a "social and cultural renaissance" that connected not only old townies to the downtown they remembered, but also the new generation of high-tech workers and Massachusetts emigres to their adopted hometown.
But with "no downtown hotel, no downtown civic center, no downtown museums, no downtown galleries," Manoian said, the city had to come up with a reason to come to Main Street again. A yearlong calendar of special events and programs became that reason. It began with the Holiday Winter Stroll, which last November drew 18,000 people to Main Street to stroll by candlelight through 20 downtown performance venues, Manoian said.
"I just love the Winter Stroll. The music and food and people ... it's a lot of fun," said Sarah Middleton of Nashua, who was enjoying a light lunch at Martha's Exchange on a recent Saturday afternoon. "My children would be so disappointed if we didn't go."
It was the first year's turnout of 10,000 people, Manoian said, that "sent a very powerful signal to the downtown business community -- you must make it an enjoyable place again."
Philip Scontsas, whose grandfather started in business downtown in 1912, is president of Destination Downtown, a group of businesspeople, residents and employees focused on creating what Manoian calls "a whole new mindset" downtown.
"A lot of our success here is that we didn't limit it (Destination Downtown) to just business owners," said Scontsas, whose family has owned a jewelry store on Main Street for 25 years. "We brought in a lot of talent" in planning events and raising funds for downtown programs, and "it's been well-received and very successful."
The four major seasonal events -- the Holiday Stroll, the Taste of Nashua, Twist the Night Away and the Nashua River Harvest Festival -- are designed to "showcase the downtown," Scontsas said. "It not only gives people a nice evening in the downtown, but it also gives us, as merchants, a large audience to show them what we do."
"If you don't have an evening scene working, your downtown is not coming back," argued Manoian, pointing to the Lowell Folk Festival as an inspiration for downtown Nashua events.
Joseph Oakes, of Lowell, who had met friends at Martha's Exchange for a bite recently, agreed with Manoian.
"I never used to come to downtown Nashua 10 or 15 years ago, but now some of my friends and I will meet here or at a club after work on Friday nights or during the weekend," he said. "We might have a few drinks, eat dinner, watch a game. We can always find something to do." Downtown patrons may also be drawn in by the beautifully restored Hunt Memorial Library, which is used for smaller social and educational events; the nearby American Stage Festival; and of course the Nashua Pride professional baseball team, which plays at Holman Stadium, a five-minute walk from downtown.
Middleton, who often shops at Alec's for her three children's school shoes, sports cleats and dance slippers, said she's also brought them to see plays at the American Stage Festival. "We've seen A Christmas Carol and The Velveteen Rabbit," she said. "We don't have to drive all the way to Boston and it's nice to be able to walk to a restaurant to grab a quick meal after the show."
New rules, new residents
Along with the cultural events, Manoian said, the city and merchants worked together to put people on the sidewalks by:
* asking the Board of Aldermen to pass an ordinance allowing alcohol service outside in designated areas, and encouraging restaurants to set up sidewalk cafes.
* getting the city to "aggressively" improve the look of downtown, with benches, trash receptacles and trees. "The city made a huge commitment," Manoian said.
* working together to recruit new businesses to fill vacant storefronts. "When vacant spaces do happen," Manoian said, "the property owners will call me, or I'll call them." Nowadays, he said, "we're not just going for anything we can be selective" and pick businesses "to complement the scene."
Karen Goddard opened her second Mother and Child clothing store in downtown Nashua five years ago, moving to Main Street last year. She's seen the downtown scene improve vastly since she came to town.
"More businesses, more people, more enthusiasm," she said.
Goddard was lured to the downtown by "the ambience, neighborliness nostalgia, maybe." The neighborliness is largely business-to-business; there are residential neighborhoods nearby, though not nearly enough, Manoian said. Nashua's size has something to do with that -- with 36 square miles, people spread out and didn't cluster downtown, as in older, smaller Merrimack Valley cities. The result is lots of subdivisions, few downtown dwellings.
"We have to start really working hard toward building a greater mix of residential space in downtown Nashua," he said.
What housing there is -- in old mills, in the Clocktower Place apartment buildings -- is drawing a mix of the elderly and "affluent, hip people." Clocktower, Manoian said, is "filled to the brim," with 25 percent of its 300 apartments set aside for the disabled and low-income.
More work to do
Clearly, the downtown still isn't what everyone would like it to be. A large rooming house dominates Railroad Square to the north; heading south on Main Street, there's a big gap after the Hollis Street intersection, where City Hall and some smaller shops and diners mark the traditional boundary of the downtown.
"We want to expand that boundary down to Allds Street," Manoian said. "Simoneau Plaza (a former strip mall) is going to be beautifully redeveloped and the hospital (Southern New Hampshire Regional Medical Center) is included in there. It's an interesting approach, to see if we can integrate those areas."
Also, parking is a common concern. Though it boasts plenty of on-street parking and large parking garages and lots off Main Street, Manoian said, "a lot of people were resistant to using the back parking garages." Downtown advocates have been working to convince people that "walking is not a dirty word in downtown Nashua."
But Tyngsboro resident Karen Martella isn't entirely convinced.
"I don't mind walking, but with an infant and a two-year-old to cart around, I look for the closest space available when I come downtown," she said, pausing after dropping off a watch to be repaired. "Nashua has really improved over the past five or 10 years, though. My husband and I have had dinner at several of the restaurants. When the kids are older, I'll probably come more often."
And, said Valuk and Manoian, the next big project is building a performing arts center, to build on downtown's cultural successes.
But even as is, the downtown is a retail and restaurant center that works, night and day. "It's evolved to be different," Scontsas said. "What we finally learned in downtown Nashua is we're not trying to be a mall. We just have to be what we are, and specialize in personal service -- stores that are geared to the unique, an interesting, different shopping experience." "I just consider myself extremely lucky to be able to work in an environment like downtown Nashua," he said. "I'm very spoiled."
This story ran in The Sun on 8/13/2000.