Mixing It Up

Some communities just have curb appeal. They are the kind of places you want to shop along Main Street and grab a bite to eat before looking for a new apartment or office on an upper floor. Others look like a drunken monkey planned them.

In some NH communities, a lack of curb appeal is often the result of decades of poor planning and erratic zoning decisions. Some cities and towns, though, are rethinking their strategy and adopting a mixed-use approach to downtown areas to make them vibrant again. That means striking the right balance of professional offices, restaurants and shops as well as apartments and condos. Instead of building out, communities are building up and taking advantage of second and third stories of buildings. They are also rethinking zoning and planning policies to encourage that ideal blend.

Reversing decades of poor planning requires towns and cities to create long-term plans of their own. Meredith now has a quaint waterfront downtown with a public dock, hotels, restaurants and shopping, but it was not always that way. Meredith used to be a defunct mill town with a lackluster public waterfront. The transformation happened because officials developed a strong long-range plan for its downtown that has been updated and tweaked over the years, says John Edgar, community development director for the Town of Meredith.

There are several key ingredients that go into the alchemy of a thriving downtown, says Christopher Way, interim director of the NH Division of Economic Development, including: making financing and investment options available for commercial tenants, supportive infrastructure, ongoing property management, dispute resolution, and parking, what he calls one of the most challenging aspects of downtown planning.

A Clean Slate

The City of Claremont isn't just tweaking its zoning and planning, officials have wiped the slate clean to create new and more efficient zoning ordinances, says Nancy Merrill, director of planning and development for the City of Claremont, and Michael McCrory, interim city planner.

Folks love downtown Claremont, they think it's a beautiful, historic place, McCrory says. But there's a lot of nonconforming structures where, if that structure burned down or was destroyed by some accident or act of God, the owner couldn't rebuild it in the same way without a fairly excruciating review process.

So as part of a HUD Community Challenge Grant received in 2010, city officials started reviewing the zoning ordinance for the city center, looking for impediments to private investment in buildings and businesses, Merrill says. The original ordinance was written in 1976 and amended many times over the years in an attempt to divide a historic city center into different commercial, industrial and residential zones. Back in the 1970s there was a real push to separate all of these uses, Merrill says, explaining that push was probably due to a desire to keep commercial operations from disturbing residences. Maybe you had a really loud stamping industrial operation going on near a residential neighborhood. There are ways to deal with that now without tearing apart the whole fabric of the downtown.

The result of this patchwork zoning is a huge percentage of mixed-use properties not conforming because they really don't fit the old zoning pattern, she says. When almost every commercial building you have in the city center doesn't conform to zoning, it adds a certain layer of regulation, that is unnecessary, Merrill says, as those businesses need waivers to do any work.

A new zoning plan is going before the city planning board and council for approval early this year. The proposed ordinance designates the entire downtown and mill district as a mixed-use district. What it does is simplifies the downtown zoning and integrates the mixed-use concept, says McCrory.

Merrill says the city's new ordinances encourage commercial uses on lower levels, and residential and offices on second and third floors, with some light industrial use along the Sugar River. In fact, the riverside development of the mill buildings in 2009 is a shining example of how a mixed-use strategy can yield  economic rewards. The Common Man Inn occupies the lower couple of floors with Red River Computer Co. on another couple of floors. The building is attached by walkway to The Common Man Restaurant and is near a state office building.

Merrill says the goal is to encourage mixed-uses and fill second and third floors of buildings.

Reinvigorating downtowns isn't just about encouraging mixed-uses of buildings, but cultivating the right mix. Communities that typically are more successful also have a good understanding of the desired mix, not just of residential to commercial, but the desired portfolio of companies that will comprise the commercial mix, i.e., the percentage of desired retail space, innovative startups, and anchor tenants, says Way of the NH Division of Economic Development.

Creative Financing

Some of the most successful projects and communities are those that bring together financing from a variety of non-traditional resources in a creative way at the local, state and federal levels, says Stephen Heavener, executive director of the Capital Regional Development Council in Concord.

Few projects are being undertaken in New Hampshire depending entirely on market rate and conventional financing, he says. Keene is a great example. The City of Keene, with the help of the Monadnock Economic Development Corporation, has used a variety of non-traditional financing to develop Railroad Avenue, which sports a new Marriott and will soon have a food co-op and a new courthouse, among other projects, Heavener says. The Monadnock Economic Development Corporation put together a mix of New Market Tax Credits from the NH Business Finance Authority; loan and grant funds from the Capital Regional Development Council's Brownfield Loan Fund to clean up some of the properties on Railroad Avenue; and Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds from the NH Community Development Finance Authority.

The City of Concord has also been successful using creative public-private collaborative efforts in Penacook and on South Main Street in Concord. With the help of Brownfield grants, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funds, a state tax abatement program called 79-E, the city was able to help clean up the Tannery site in Penacook. Through a variety of tax credits-including New Market, CDFA and 79-E-the Smile Office Building, developed by The Duprey Companies,  went up on South Main Street in Concord. It now houses the League of NH Craftsmen, administrative offices for Concord Hospital, and The Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce.

Investing in Infrastructure

Heavener says another key to successful development is, the commitment and willingness of the public and private leadership in the community to invest in infrastructure and other programs that make them competitive.

Heavener points to a $12 million water and sanitary sewer expansion project in the Route 3A corridor in Bow as an example. The project, on which the CRDC served as a development consultant to Bow for the past four years, is designed to recruit new industrial and office investment to town to diversify its economic base. And it's working. The recently announced $15 million NH Liquor Commission warehouse project on Route 3A would not have happened without the availability of municipal water, Heavener says. We are also working with several other potential large industrial projects seriously considering Bow as a direct result of the availability of municipal water for fire protection.

Officials in the Town of Winchester are also investing in infrastructure. Margaret Sharra, land use administrator for Winchester, says the town is installing new sidewalks throughout downtown, thanks in part to a federal highway grant it received in 2009. According to Sharra, town officials approved $317,400 for the project with 80 percent paid for with federal funds. The town was able to obtain additional funds, upping the project cost to $371,000. Those additional funds are not enough to complete the job, now in the engineering phase, but the town will be able to install new sidewalks in two-thirds of the proposed area. The town will finish the project in the future, Sharra says.

When you have a mixed use area, you have to make sure that you have the proper infrastructure, such as sidewalks and well maintained roads, she says. Usually in a mixed use you are going to have car, truck, pedestrian and bicycle traffic and you can also have younger children. And so I think your infrastructure needs to be important.

The pay off is not always immediately apparent and such investments require a long-term view of economic development. Businesses will invest in communities that demonstrate the willingness to be proactive and share in project costs, Heavener says. The leadership must come from the elected leadership and secure strong support from the business community and private sector.