Laconia is on the move alright… - Granite Grok

Laconia is on the move alright…

Laconia Mill Capleez at Flickr

The Laconia Mayor likes to say that Laconia is a city on the move. The reality is that Laconia is not on the move, Massachusetts is, and they are moving to Laconia.

The saying more accurately should be “come to Laconia,” the playground of Massachusetts, as the ends seem to justify the means.

The constant barrage of the Opera House and revitalization of Lakeport and the Colonial Theater, and the revitalization of Downtown is bittersweet and comes with a price nobody seems to be aware of or care about.

I have been polling Laconia residents as to why they choose Laconia as their home, and the two hands-down winning responses are the people and the Lakes. This is important because soon, under the Laconia Mayors’ grand plan, you will have neither.


We want to thank State Rep. Gregg Hough for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you would like us to consider, please submit it to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.


Having been involved in the entertainment business most of my life, there is one specific reality I’d like to share, and that is entertainment venues do well when the economy does well. Entertainment venues don’t do well when the economy is bad. Entertainment is not the economy.

With so many small businesses that have gone belly up in the past year, many factories that once found Laconia attractive are gone. There really is no business community that drives the city. This is the reason for the “affordable housing shortage.” The people who live in Laconia don’t work here, and those who work here can’t afford to live here.

My entire life Laconia has been some 16,000 or so people. The question is, why is housing difficult now? The answer is jobs. Locals don’t have the economy to stay in their homes, so they sell to out-of-staters for big dollars, and the city drools over the potential increase in property tax to pay for their financial indiscretions.

To keep a viable property tax base, Laconia has decided (without your input) to make it an entertainment hub for out-of-state investors who want to be entertained. And you, as the current tax base, get to pay for your own eviction.

As proof of such misguided allegiance, let’s look at a brief history of downtown Laconia.

Back in the ’70s, the town fathers thought that the beautiful and functional downtown needed to be upgraded by what we know as urban renewal. They spent a fortune in studies and on hiring people not from here to update our downtown. This was when we took away parking, redesigned traffic flow, and then built a parking garage. Yes, the same parking garage that has been empty for 40 years.

Many times since, our city officials have changed the traffic pattern and tinkered with parking to no avail.

The little gazebo, now a homeless and drug user destination, used to be a 90-space parking lot. So, now we need parking? Arguably the strangest back-in parking design is now our latest enhancement with more spending to acquire more parking on the taxpayer’s dime.

The city keeps spending your money.

The city keeps promising to fix the problems they create, and they dangle shiny new buildings in front of the people while their jobs, housing, friends, and families all leave to be replaced with bigger money so the swindle can continue.

I used to know all the families in Lakeport because my father knew them and my grandfather before knew them. They are almost all gone. With no business, you will have no affordable housing, and soon nobody here will be here. You can thank our Mayor and his rubber stamp council. The stage is set, (pun intended) big money is here you are not welcome here anymore, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. On second thought, the Mayor is right. We are on the move!

 

(Image HT:  capleez under the Creative Commons license  – cropped and resized)

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