Concord has added one more item to the to-do list for its ongoing downtown redesign: Bury two blocks of utility lines along South Main Street.
That last-minute project will add $2 million to the budget for the Main Street project, bringing the total cost to more than $13 million for construction, design and marketing. Part of that money came from a $4.71 million federal grant. By its completion, the construction will redesign and rebuild nine blocks of downtown.
The North Main Street portion is finished. Construction on South Main Street is ongoing and scheduled to end in the fall.
This add-on will take down the lines in front of the Concord Food Cooperative, the former Department of Employment Security building, the Eagles building, the Concord Feminist Health Center and a few local offices. City Engineer Ed Roberge has said burying the lines for just one more block – in front of the John F. Kennedy Building apartments and the Capitol Center for the Arts – would add nearly $1 million to the price tag, so those lines are not being included.
Supporters say the improved aesthetics will increase the potential for redevelopment in that area – in particular at the former state Department of Employment Security building, now vacant and owned by the city.
“I think if we don’t do it, it’s very shortsighted,” Ward 6 Councilor Linda Kension said last month. “To think about doing it at a later date, digging up everything, would be penny wise and pound foolish.”
Despite the cost and added time, some councilors said they contemplated that extra block.
“My concern is that five years, 10 years from now, we may have regretted that we didn’t spend the extra million,” At-large Councilor Mark Coen said.
But the two people who spoke during the public hearing both opposed the underground utilities. Their concerns were primarily financial; city officials said the $2 million is a bond that could be absorbed by a special tax district called a TIF district.
In a TIF district, tax revenue from developments inside its boundaries will be reinvested in new projects in that area. Eventually, the city would close the district, so the revenue could flow directly to the general fund. Adding more bonds like this one, opponents argued, delays that relief for average taxpayers.
Concord resident Jim Baer ticked off a list of other uses for this money – neighborhood paving, the newly approved Heights Community Center, the renovation of city swimming pools or services for people who are homeless or have addictions.
He called the project “a boondoggle.”
“I can’t believe that you want to spend $2 million on such a banal project, when there are so many people in need,” Baer said. “It’s a cruel joke.”
The final vote was 11-2. The opposing votes came from Ward 2 Councilor Allan Herschlag and Ward 7 Councilor Keith Nyhan.