Lebanon
“I think that a lot of the stuff in here is appropriate to Manchester or maybe Boston, but not to Lebanon,” said City Councilor Tim McNamara in an audio recording of the meeting. “The parking garage wrapped with apartments being one. I just don’t think we have the population base or market to justify that sort of thing.”
McNamara was among several councilors who expressed concern that proposed recommendations for new infrastructure and private development downtown would lead to the loss of essential parking spaces, costly construction projects and a possible hit to taxpayers. However, city planning officials stressed the plans are still in draft form and are only meant to provide a road map for future development over the next two decades.
Despite widespread criticism of the plan, City Planner David Brooks took away the message that city officials and consultants are on the right track.
“At this point, what the council was being asked last night was for their comment on the vision itself. ‘Is this the right direction to be going?’ ” Brooks said on Thursday. “I think the discussion last night was that ‘yes.’ ”
That vision was detailed in a draft report issued earlier this month. It calls for traffic and street improvements, an arts walk, completion of the Mascoma River Greenway, a parking garage and new residential and commercial buildings. Consultants estimate it would take millions to complete those projects in a time line that spans decades.
The projects would require a sufficient number of people who would frequent the new businesses and live in the new homes, said McNamara, who was skeptical Lebanon could find them.
“This is not a rapidly growing area. It hasn’t been historically for the last couple of decades,” he said in the recording. “You either have to get market share by growing the number of heads on pillows downtown or you’ve got to steal market share from somebody else.”
Instead, he recommended offering the city’s unused public works building on Spencer Street as a site for possible development.
In comments submitted before the meeting, councilors agreed with McNamara’s assessment, and expressed concern about plans to reduce parking around the downtown pedestrian mall in favor of new buildings. The plan recommends constructing a new parking garage to replace those spaces at an estimated cost of about $2 million.
“This will eliminate a fair bit of parking and will necessitate the demolition of the existing building housing Village Pizza, The Cave and several other businesses and replacing them with a parking garage,” wrote Councilor Bill Finn before the meeting. “Where are these established businesses to go?”
Finn wrote he would be reluctant to support proposals that are unlikely to show a return on the city’s investment, which he believes would happen to parts of the plan.
“I cannot and will not support any proposal that requires increased contributions from taxpayers,” he continued.
While she appreciates the hard work that went into the draft, Councilor Karen Liot Hill also worried that several components of the plan are not appropriate for Lebanon, such as parking.
“We have a bisected, major municipal parking lot that serves our downtown, which is not a guaranteed, viable downtown,” said Liot Hill, who owns The Lebanon Diner, which is located on the downtown mall. “(Downtown) needs viable parking.”
The fate of a dilapidated rail tunnel running below downtown was also a point of contention between the council and consultants who drew up the plan. Questions about how to address the tunnel’s deteriorating condition prompted the visioning study, which called for it to be rehabilitated and opened as part of the Mascoma River Greenway.
Consultants said it would cost $1.8 million to fill the tunnel in, an idea endorsed by Councilor Sarah Welsch, who said people don’t always feel comfortable walking through tunnels and parking garages at night.
“Those two things just don’t fit here,” she said at the meeting.
Noting the difference in cost between filling in the tunnel and rehabilitating it, Finn said the latter option represented “$200,000 down the tubes.”
“It’s never been an inviting feature,” he said. “I don’t think it will ever be used as a tunnel.”
Frank Gould, co-chair of the Mascoma River Greenway Coalition, said the community has been generally in favor of repairing the tunnel, which would keep cyclists and pedestrians off downtown roads. At past public forums, he said, people championed using the tunnel as part of the future trail.
“I haven’t been hearing from anyone that there were concerns” about repairing the tunnel,” he said on Thursday.
Although City Council faulted elements of the plan, they praised consultants’ ability to look toward a future downtown that is drastically different and offers improvements.
“We have the opportunity now that nobody else has had,” said Councilor Erling Heistad. “I think we can move forward to do some wonderful things.”
Brooks, the city’s planning director, said consultants and city officials will now work to complete a final report and present it to the City Council on Nov. 16.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.