When Elyssa Alfieri thinks about downtown Concord, she thinks about an old T-shirt she once had.
Not the one with a slogan about the city being comatose. To Alfieri, that one was never true.
“Concord got cool when you weren’t looking,” read the shirt, designed by her friend, Katy Brown.
“I really feel like that’s the better Concord slogan,” Alfieri said.
As a Main Street business owner, Alfieri sees Concord’s downtown on a solid upward trajectory. Over decades, it has supported and nurtured a small-business ecosystem to form a tight-knit collective that has evolved with the times, offering city-like experiences while retaining a small-town feel. It has become a place where people can spend all day — but, perhaps, not all night.
Alfieri — a former head of the Chamber of Commerce board who studied retailing and fashion merchandising — has worked downtown since 2009. She bought the consignment shop Lilise Designer Resale in 2016.
“We’ve been working really hard to get away from that image,” she said about the one depicting Concord as a sleepy town. “None of us believes that it’s true.”
In interviews with the Monitor, many downtown business owners agreed. Concord’s strength, they said, is that it isn’t trying to be any other city. It is a retail destination that also boasts a growing arts scene, a widening array of restaurants and a historic feel. Other owners said that, even with downtown’s refresh, doing business there has downsides – namely space, cost of rent and ease of parking for their customers.
Most merchants were open to critiques from residents about their hours, but only some said the on-the-ground demand for longer evenings and nights is actually there.
‘Chicken or the egg’
When Brian Shea stumbled on a vacant tavern space overlooking the State House in October 1999, he knew it would change his life.
Shea was a chef coming out of Boston who had gone to St. Anselm College but never ventured into the capital city. The first few years of the Barley House were “eye-opening,” and the nights, especially early weeknights, were quiet. But he adjusted, and things slowly took off.
What has made the Barley House such a staple, and a success is that it can be a little bit of everything to everybody, Shea said, much like downtown as a whole. It wasn’t pigeonholed into being just a bar or just a family restaurant or just a lunch spot for lawmakers.
“You might have a family of four sitting over here, you might have the governor there, and you might have a couple blue-collar guys at the bar, and that’s kind of what the Barley House is,” he said. “You’re walking in here, and you’re going to feel at home.”
Street reconstruction, at the time, was tough on business, but the renovation did breathe life into the area, he said, from the classic, quaint aesthetic to the popularity of outdoor dining.
“It caught us up to what Concord should have been all along,” he said.
Shea knows people say that there aren’t enough late-night options downtown – “and I agree,” he said.
Changing the culture of Main Street at night would have to be a collective effort, in Shea’s view. Restaurants would have to be more intentional about pulling people in after dark. People who say they want to go out more would have to “walk the walk” into downtown.
“It’s a ‘chicken or the egg’ thing,” he said.
After the pandemic, even as regular service rebounded, his bar scene never did.
Before the pandemic, The Barley House was regularly open after midnight. For years after dining reopened, closing time remained 9 p.m. About a year ago, Shea bumped it back up to 10.
Shea wants to build back his night hours, but with costs rising, especially food, he said that risk would be bigger now than it was before.
“People got so used to being at home that late night is just not a thing,” he said. “If, after a show, three people come in, that’s not enough demand.”
At the same time, he continued, “we have to be available. If you walk by and everywhere looks rolled up and closed, you’re going to keep walking.”
‘Sweet spot’
Alfieri has heard chatter for years about people wanting businesses, including hers, to stay open later. At Lilise, she said, the reality is that people aren’t shopping in the evening.
“I go where the traffic goes,” she said. “At 6 p.m., there’s just not a lot of people beating down our door to come in, so there’s no impetus for us to stay open any later.” If customer demand were there around dinner hours, she said, “We’d be dying to stay open later.”
Staffing plays a role, too. Many shops downtown are owner-operated or have just a few employees. Longer hours take a toll.
For some downtown businesses, being part of the stumble-in of a Main Street economy means everything.
Zoe & Co., an undergarment store specializing in bra fittings, had once been open until 9 p.m. Currently, the store stays open until 7 p.m. most days, and store manager Loraina Valdepena said her shop is busy right through that time.
“It’s a sweet spot,” she said.
Over the last few years, Zoe & Co. has also expanded its hours to be open every day, adding Sunday and Monday back into the rotation.
Fewer and fewer undergarment stores are offering professional bra fittings, and a lot of women, especially younger ones, may not know the service even exists, Valdepena explained. Or people might be intimidated by the thought of being fitted for a bra.
Just being on Main Street, in the sight of passersby, gives Zoe & Co. a boost when it comes to outreach and advertising. The proof, Valdepena said, is in the numbers: Even as a sign on the door encourages people to make an appointment, she estimated that half of the store’s customers are just visiting downtown.
“Our whole concept is, at some point, you’re going to need us,” Valdepena said. “‘I didn’t even know this was something I could do’ is a sentence that I hear every day.”
‘Is it worth being on Main Street?’
For other businesses along the street, being downtown isn’t all upside.
Karen Hicks’ art supply and framing shop, Arts Plus, moved to Main Street from Loudon Road last year. She looked at spaces in other towns, but wanted to stay in Concord proper and liked the idea of joining the hub of small shops downtown.
She gets more walk-in customers now, at least when the weather is nice, and they generally skew younger. That exposure has been helpful, but it only goes so far.
There is a perception among customers, multiple businesses said, that finding parking is a challenge. Not having a dedicated lot has kept some of Hicks’ former regulars, especially less mobile ones, away.
“A lot of my customers are older, and they haven’t liked parking downtown,” she said. “So I don’t see a lot of the same people, or don’t see them as often.”
So far, Hicks said, “I still am not making as much money here as I was when I was on Loudon Road. It’s not balancing financially.”
Expanding her hours isn’t an option. For roughly the same rent, she said, her basement space is significantly smaller than what she had on the Heights, facing the mall. She now does her framing work at home and, therefore, can’t be in the store as often as she used to be. She’s also a caregiver for a relative.
Even established downtown businesses weigh whether Main Street is the right place for them.
Most of the customers who place printing orders at Capital Copy do so over the phone or email. Walk-ins are a tiny fraction of their business, said Sam Mostue, who runs the shop.
The business community is strong downtown, he said, and many of his regular customers are other downtown merchants who use his services to print menus and flyers. But Mostue worries if Capital Copy is missing out on business from outside downtown because people prefer a place that’s easier to access.
“Attracting a customer from, let’s just say Bow or Penacook, it’s hard because they’re like, ‘Where do we park? How do we pick up the stuff?'” Mostue said.
Most people who come by Capital Copy’s location across the street from the State House are picking up an order. When dropping by quickly and picking up larger boxes, he said, having to park a few streets away and pay the one-hour parking minimum is a hassle. It’s also a challenge for his employees to get a non-metered spot.
The business has been downtown for 36 years.
“We can totally do this at an off-premise place,” Mostue said. “That’s the thing that we’re battling right now: Is it worth being on Main Street?”
‘We’re getting there’
Gibson’s bookshop owner Michael Herrmann has watched downtown change through the windows of multiple store locations. He’s been surprised, he said, by the slow but steady build of its vitality.
“You have younger people downtown, a more diverse crowd downtown, more diverse array of businesses. You have more restaurants opening up, more of something that looks like nightlife after 5 p.m.,” he said. “I mean, we’re getting there.”
Gibson’s itself recently expanded its evening hours to 7 p.m.
Herrmann had recently hosted a conference of peer, indy bookstores from the region. “They said, “Oh, you’re only open until six?'” he recalled. The comment made him reconsider.
“It seems to be paying off so far,” he said. “I think a lot of people appreciate the opportunity to have some place to go after six, even if it’s only until seven.”
Herrmann also thinks people overlook how much the footprint of Main Street has expanded. “When I first got to town, the south end of Main Street was almost completely unpopulated,” he said.
From the refurbishing of the Capital Center for the Arts to the construction of new buildings — like the one that now houses Gibson’s and its cafe — downtown’s energy has been seeping outward.
From side streets to Storrs Street, Herrmann hopes that the city “continues to think in a visionary fashion” and pursues more investments in the area.
“Whenever they see a shot and they can do it, I think it pays off for everybody,” he said.
