Two longtime goals for downtown Concord are closer in reach than ever before, but the Legislature is still weighing whether to lend a helping hand.
Top officials and businesspeople have heralded both measures – one to open the State House on weekends, another to keep the Merrimack County Superior Court on North Main Street. These projects are directly tied to Concord’s economic vitality, they say, and their failure would be a loss to the capital city.
Their arguments have so far swayed the state House of Representatives in favor of both pieces of legislation. On Wednesday, two Senate committees debated whether their chamber should follow suit.
While the proposal to open the State House on weekends was quickly recommended to pass, a bid to keep the Merrimack County Superior Court continued to face scrutiny from lawmakers.
“There is so much benefit that the city receives from being the host of state government,” said Tim Sink, president of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce. “It just cannot be disputed. There are issues that pop up from time to time that create a level of tension, and you saw that at today’s hearing.
“But there’s a certain willingness on the part of the state to really go out of their way to pay attention to what the needs and the sensibilities are of the host community,” he added. “I think at the end of the day, the state is going to want to support the city in this effort.”
The two ideas have been discussed for years with little progress.
“They’ve come to a point now where I think they’re ripe and ready to go forward,” Concord Mayor Jim Bouley said. “I hope the process will play out that the county and city and state will be able to reach a favorable outcome.”
City representatives – state Sen. Dan Feltes, Rep. Steve Shurtleff, Bouley and a number of others – spoke or at least appeared at separate hearings for the two bills. Shurtleff described their effort as “synergy.” Feltes said the day’s hearings showed “an all-hands-on-deck approach.”
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
For more than two hours, senators on the Capital Budget Committee questioned the details of the nontraditional superior court proposal. Rather than build a new courthouse on Hazen Drive for $16.6 million, as the Legislature planned in the budget, Merrimack County has proposed to build an improved courthouse at the current address and then sell it to the state for no more than $15.7 million. Concord developer Steve Duprey has been instrumental in creating that plan, and the job is now out to bid.
The committee was skeptical of Duprey’s plan for parking, but it was more concerned about assuming a financial risk.
“The state needs to be protected,” said Sen. David Boutin, a Hooksett Republican. “So if this goes over budget $1, $100,000, $300,000 – if that happens, the question would be who pays for that? And it’s not clear in this bill.”
Officials from the county and the state Department of Administrative Services, however, said they were confident in safeguards that will be written in a contract if the bill passes.
The committee did not vote on the bill and will meet again next week.
Earlier in the day, the Senate Executive Departments and Administration Committee spent less than 15 minutes discussing the proposal to open the State House to tour groups on weekends.
Feltes, a Concord Democrat, told the committee he has seen tour buses pull up to the State House on weekends, only to discover the doors are locked.
“The State House is the people’s house, and it ought to be open on the weekend on a limited basis, especially for working families that can’t get here during the week,” Feltes said. “It also helps one of our top industries in the state – tourism.”
If passed, the bill would allow the Legislature to negotiate an agreement with a private entity to run tours on Saturdays. The chamber of commerce, which has run an informational kiosk outside the State House during tourist season for years, has agreed so far to be that host.
No state money would be involved; under this proposal, the chamber would cover the costs of opening the building for Saturdays between Memorial Day and Columbus Day – estimated to be about $25,000.
Sen. John Reagan, a Deerfield Republican, deleted language from the original bill, which specified the time period for the State House to open on the weekends – Saturdays between Memorial Day and Columbus Day. With that phrase, he said, the bill might inadvertently block student or veteran groups who schedule events in the State House during other weekends throughout the year.
The chamber and the state can add that specific language into their memorandum of understanding, Reagan said. That agreement would need to be approved by a legislative committee before taking effect.
The committee members unanimously recommended the bill to pass but because of Reagan’s change, a House committee will again need to sign off.
On either or both bills, if the House and the Senate don’t agree on the wording, they could meet in a committee of conference to iron out the differences. Advocated of the courthouse were weary of that process, though.
“You send something there to make pork, and it comes out a shrimp,” said attorney Richard Uchida, who is handling the courthouse proposal for the county
Their success, Sink said, will require “all that good will that has been built up between the city and the state over years.”
“These are both critical, they are both going to impact downtown Concord,” Sink said. “But they both require that relationship between the city and the state. That is crucial.”
(Megan Doyle can be reached at 369-3321, mdoyle@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @megan_e_doyle.)