Laconia Downtown vs Tilton Downtown
 

This morning while driving north on Main St Laconia I counted at least a half dozen vacant store fronts as well as a vacant theatre and the old J.J. Newberrys. Contrast that to Main St Tilton. In roughly the same linear distance not one vacant storefront from railroad crossing to railroad crossing. I like strolling there. Main St Tilton and Franklin are charming according to our visiting friends.

Just a general toss up question.

Why couldn't Laconia, with a population three times Tilton, attract more businesses to downtown?

Oh ya, LA native here...

Access? Parking? Store hours? Types of stores? Lots of surface reasons.

By driving your car down that narrow, curved, one lane Main St entry-way between the parking garage, and the former Funky Monkey, to get into the former Laconia shopping Main St downtown, you pass right through a negative retail energy zone. Aliens from outer space, namely little green beings from Mars, beep - beep - beep - nnert- nnert, have focused a powerfull force field on that section of road which totally destroys all desire to spend money or even to just go window shopping so no business can ever survive, except of course for the world famous yoga studio, www.earthheartyoga.com. which does very well.

Yoga simply overpowers all alien force fields from outer space....every time!

With a parking lot just across Main St, Earth Heart Yoga does real well in it's comfy second floor location. Walking through that large old commercial building and taking a good look at the lobby, the outside facades, and the large street level retail spaces, one gets a sense that fifty years ago, Main St Laconia was a very happening retail and commercial location.

In order to fix it, both the parking garage and former Funky Monkey need to be moved back.:rolleye2:

Just a little tough competing with an alien force like that!

In my experience, the biggest problem with downtown Laconia is a few bad property owners. You might notice that most of the empty storefronts are located in 3 or 4 buildings. Having seen a proposed lease on one of the storefronts in a building with 3 out of 4 empty, it's no surprise to me that no one's moving in there...

What you said. And back in the day: the loss of O'Shea's Department store was a terrible blow to the area. People shopped there from all over the Lakes Region. It was the Macy's of the north country.

I think the fundamental difference is that Franklin and Tilton are Main St. towns and Laconia is not, at least anymore.

The main thru traffic corridor travels directly down Main Street in both towns, when you reach Laconia, they removed downtown from the Main Street, there is no reason to go that way unless you are going that way.

Are there more Section 8 residents living nearby in Laconia? That leads to more crime. I don't like the "feel" of Laconia, and there are crime stories coming from it fairly regularly that make it stick out in the _Union Leader_.

I have a friend who's originally from El Salvador and he complains about the Section 8 people and the druggies on a house on Church Street that's had multiple police visitations. He lives right next store. Hey, there's a joke somewhere in there.

He's had multiple occurrences when people were passed out or were trespassing on his property. He reacts badly to this and even claims to have had a physical confrontation with one. It's a good thing he says he threatened to use his baseball bat rather than his Glock 17. He's an excellent shot with it.

Ever check out the smelly crew that lines up to use the Laconia library's internet computers before the place opens? It takes an effort of will not to form negative stereotypes in my mind at guys who look as though they haven't showered in several weeks.

I feel sorry for the librarians who have to deal with them.

I'm always armed when I'm in Laconia. It makes me feel a lot better.

There's a new family-owned restaurant I want to try in Tilton. But I rarely get down that way, though I'm very familiar--I should say intimately familiar--with the stores of Franklin and Tilton since I load the UPS trucks that deliver there. Definitely a lot more going on there than in Laconia.

I think that has much to do with it. Plus, the Theatre, as I understand has fire regulation issues. Last time I was by, I noticed the inside was being used for storage.

Let's not forget though, that new businesses are coming to downtown Laconia. Burrito ME just opened in the Train Station, and an antique mall just opened in the former O' Shea's building in the last couple of weeks! The Pink Door Boutique is another that's relatively new to downtown.

As a business owner who has been considering a move to Main Street Laconia, I have given a lot of thought to this question.

Laconia is a much better town to do business in that Tilton (larger population base, compact downtown area with numerous business and professional offices, etc). But Main Street is certainly problematic.

To copy from a different thread on a related topic:

"Things are not that simple in downtown. Several of the places have "reputations", (or the owner has a "reputation"). For example one of the downtown landlords was successfully sued by the state (after being charged extra by the City of Laconia for not getting any building permits for alterations). In that case, the business associates are suing the lead owner...[Note: Recently settled out of court so we may be seeing some action soon]

If you had seen the lease offered by one of the other business owners, you would know why the majority of units in that building is empty. It wasn't quite as bad as "if anything happens, its all your fault (and responsibility)"... but it was pretty close.

In another building, the business tenants have been leaving because problems upstairs have a way of trickling (or flooding) downstairs.

Personally I think the downtown is on the rebound and many good things are growing. If only the owners would support downtown, rather than try to bleed it dry financially, I think it would soon blossom. If the 11 retail spaces currently vacate filled, it would be a lot more vital. As someone who has tried to get a decent space downtown (emphasis on the decent), I would love to be there now."

To add to the above.... City Hall in Laconia is not terribly pro-business. Some seem relatively indifferent to downtown, and some positively hostile (as in the employee who told me if I complained he would enforce the law (against a rogue landlord I was renting from)... but until the landlord had stopped violating the law MY business would have to close... so was I sure I wanted to complain.

Even the design of the street is a problem. The narrow one way street at the entrance to downtown (parking garage on one side, Funky Monkey et. al on the other) is one of the worst examples of urban renewal I have ever seen. It does seem too late to do anything about it... but if they picked up the row of buildings from Sawyers to Family Dollar and moved them 20 feet back (west) the downtown would be a MUCH nicer place (ain't gonna happen though)

The good news is that the downtown merchants are working to make things better - a weekly farmers market on Main Street (rather than just the one at City Hall Parking Lot) is coming, as well as many fun and exciting events. A committee is vigorously working to make Main Street Laconia a better place, and I think it will be experiencing renewal in the next few years... as the "bad" landlords leave. For example, one block (one of the worst) is now on sale... helped by the owner's loss of property by foreclosure at the Weir's recently. Another issue is Bloom's - an anchor store for downtown. perhaps one of the several plans to restore the building to use will actually come to fruition.

The downtown definitely used to be a more vibrant place but the "narrow, one way street" is definitely an improvement over the pedestrian mall that used to be there. It wasn't until that road was put in that I even noticed 1/2 of the businesses on that stretch of downtown.

That said, Beacon St. East/West is the worst example of renewal in my mind, since they route all traffic away from downtown businesses.

For anyone who thinks urban renewal was a good thing, check out this page:
http://www.weirsbeach.com/Largejpgs/...wnlaconia.html

The page features many views of Banks Square, which was the intersection of Pleasant, Main, and Mill Streets.

Wow, thanks for posting that! I can remember when downtown Laconia was thriving! How sad it isn't still like that. We went there a lot to shop and I loved Woolworth's and O'shea's when I was little. Or was it JJ Newbury? (sp.?)

I grew up in LA during the fifties. Wonderful to see the photos of how the downtown was back then before urban renewal. It seemed like a good idea at the time to some. Who knew? . The southern end of Main St was pretty shabby as I remember. It's to bad someone with vision couldn't have rescued the old storefronts.What a draw that would be now... Oh well.

'Shore Makes Some Of Us...
 

Antiques out here feel much better!! :)
Thanks for posting this fatnoah!!!! Awesome Post!!


Terry
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Urban renewal
 

Then this might interest you too.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...18.htmlstory#1

There's a city in southern Maine that some of you might be familiar with - Sanford. It had many of the same businesses, same mill companies, similar architecture, etc., that Laconia had/has.

I am from Sanford but Argie is from Laconia. We've had several discussions about the similarities of the two cities. Argie had noted many times that Sanford did not do Urban Renewal, like Laconia had done, so therefore it continued to grow and retained its 'historical-look' on many streets (Main St., School St., Mill St., Charles St., etc.) but that Laconia had made a poor choice when it was decided to go with the Urban Renewal trend.

If you get a chance to drive through Sanford sometime, and especially in the mill section of town, and the streets I've named you'll see some eerie similarities but you'll also note that Sanford has a lot of new growth that you don't see in Laconia.

nvtngtxpyr;
When I said I grew up in LA I meant Laconia. LA has been a shorthand way of saying Laconia amongst my buddies and I. Sorry for the confusion.

Nice pics of the real LA though...lol

As many are aware, the former Bloom's variety, which for years before was the J J Newbury's, is a huge street level retail space, and has been vacant and 'for rent or 'for sale' for over two years.

At the same time, both CVS and Walgreens have purchased a number of contiguous lots, over on nearby Union Ave, and gone through all the legal, planning, design, and construction phases to successfully build their recently opened, stand-alone, CVS and Walgreen stores & parking lots. Located about 1/4 mile from the downtown Main St area which includes the vacant former Bloom's store, they chose to probably spend a whole lot more rather than renting or owning the former Bloom's.

You know that either CVS or Walgreen could have purchased the old Main St building, former home to Bloom's, which has a huge street level retail space, and placed their CVS or Walgreen in there.

And, they chose not to do that.

So, what happens to the empty Bloom's?

What I would like to see is a honky-tonky, bazaar style flea market complete with a lot of different stall venders.

Laconia is now home to a number of second hand stores: Saint Vincent De Paul, Salvation Army, Morgan Memorial, Too Good to be Threw, a storefront on Main St close to the Gale Library & others. So, as a mecca for 2nd hand stores, why not go & grow with that and get a super flea market started in the former Bloom's.

It could be a bloom'n & boom'n flea market in there, I tell's ya:)....the Wal-Mart of all flea markets!

Exit 7 off 89, every weekend throughout the summer, its exactly what you are looking for.

I am not from your country :emb:

Here's something that has been mentioned before by me about the downtown Laconia area. Located just a hundred feet or so from the big intersection of Main St & Union Ave, or Routes 106 & 107; just last spring 2009, the City of Laconia completed construction on a Winnipesaukee River, hand carry, canoe & kayak launching ramp situated on the nicely landscaped City Hall - village green, and it is about 50' from available roadside parking spots, if you get lucky, otherwise more parking is available at Laconia City Hall..

So, downtown Laconia may be a good spot to cartop a kayak or canoe; maybe bring a wetsuit, and roar down the very fast-moving Winnipesaukee River. It's an urban river, with embankments built of stones, granite & mortar with apparently all internal natural rocky obstructions removed sometime since 1822 when the first Lakeport Dam was built. The water can be very cold, and very swift, but what's unusual is that all normal rock obstructions one would expect have been removed so it can be a lot more dangerous than its calmness appears to be as there's almost never any white water. The put-in carry ramp is located about 100' below the Avery Dam.

Locally, the Laconia Fire Dept has a fast rescue team nearby that trains in the Winnipesaukee River for kayak-canoe-swimmer, boater-rescue mishaps such as getting hung up on a bridge support.

Depending on the time of year and the dam outflow from the 44,000 acre Lake Winnipesaukee, the Winnipesaukee River offers up a wide range of different kayaking and conditions, from cold & ferocious to warm & mellow as well as both cold water & warm water fishing for small mouth bass or trout.

It's maybe one half mile down the river, passing under about six very low bridges, to the Lake Winnisquam motorboat launch area that includes parking, toilet, a dock, & two boat-launch ramps. About 100 yards beyond the State of NH - Winnisquam motorboat launch, the Winnipesaukee River enters huge & deep Lake Winnisquam, NH's 3rd largest lake, with a Laconia City public beach on the left, and a defunct, non-operating, NH Dept Environmental Services, waste water treatment facility on the right.

Then & Now Downtown
 

FYI- the Citizen will shortly be publishing a story on this very subject. Recently I shot some aerials at the same angle & altitude as some older ones they have- the differences were amazing. (Sorry- can't share them yet). Watch for it.

I was surprised to see the road was once SO wide- parking on both sides, and 2-way traffic in the middle. Sure have messed that up....:confused:

The things that struck me the most about the pictures were the streets and the number of people out shopping.