For Emilie Christie Burack, something was missing downtown — not a store or a restaurant or even a specific service. Rather, an experience.
As a Hopkinton-based author, Burack often wrote at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord and met fellow writers for coffee and creative work time. She and her friend, Sarah McCraw Crow, were chatting one day a few years ago about opportunities for authors and readers in New Hampshire. Nothing existed that compared to the scale of other states.
They wondered if they could create a book festival themselves.
“We’re sitting there in one of the best-run and biggest independent bookstores in New England, and across the street is the Capitol Center for the Arts,” said Burack. “And so my mind just starts going ‘ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,’ like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll pull it off on Main Street between the Capitol Center and Gibson’s.'”
Downtown Concord, with its historic brick buildings, wide sidewalks and broad assortment of small businesses, offered something unique.
“You’re just experiencing it all in one place. Sometimes a book festival will be pretty informal and in a school gym. We just thought, ‘Oh gosh, we really have this beautiful city and this beautiful space where we think this could really work,'” said Burack.
The City of Concord provided funds through its Event Arts Grant Program to help the festival get off the ground. As Burack and Crow built a board of directors, they also began pursuing sponsorships.
In the fall of 2024, the first-ever New Hampshire Book Festival brought authors from around the country to the state capital to participate in free panels, meet readers and share in a collective love of literature. It drew nearly 5,000 attendees. Since then, it has grown its following and sprawls farther along Main Street each year, with vendors, book tents, food trucks and more.
The book festival, which returns this weekend, is one of many recent downtown-centered events to sprout up since the pandemic. For those feeling like more is happening in the city, it’s not your imagination.
Recurring festivities
On the second Sunday of most months when the weather is nice, cars of every color, make, model, shape, size and age line Capitol Street while their drivers take pictures, sip coffee and chat with one another.
Alex and Lyndsey Stoyle, owners of Revelstoke Coffee, started Cars and Coffee on Capitol in 2023, never expecting it to take hold the way it has.
“I think most people’s jobs every day get closer and closer to just interacting with computers, and I think that more and more people are just starved for real human connection and real human interaction,” said Alex.
He and his wife subscribe to the mentality “if it doesn’t exist, build it yourself.”
Cars and Coffee garnered such impressive participation that they added a larger fixture in September called The Main Event, stretching several blocks beyond Capitol Street.
The Stoyles are also a driving force behind the Northeast Coffee Fest, which has sprawled throughout downtown each May for the past few years after originating in Laconia with Wayfarer Coffee Roasters.
Part of the draw of these events — coffee, cars or otherwise — is the togetherness they foster.
“You don’t have to pay to get in. You don’t have to bring a car. You don’t have to buy a ticket to the coffee festival, but you have to show up and you have to talk to people to enjoy it. And I think there’s an enormous appetite for it right now,” said Alex.
Like Cars and Coffee, First Fridays have become a calendar staple each month. For the nonprofit InTown Concord, these events are blank canvases on which to paint downtown.
Former Executive Director Jessica Martin said that InTown’s programming as a whole — including Market Days, Halloween Howl, Midnight Merriment and WinterFest — strives to bolster the local businesses that define downtown. Martin departed from InTown in September for new opportunities in Manchester, the state’s largest city.
First Fridays, which launched in 2023, generate “more consistent traffic” than larger events, with the aim of attracting new faces to a familiar downtown setting, especially young professionals, according to Martin.
Beyond that, the recurring festivities offer the opportunity to innovate.
“It’s given us a place to put ideas,” she said. “People will come to us and be like, ‘Hey, have you thought about doing a scavenger hunt or have you thought about doing OctoberFest?’ Those types of things, we don’t want to create new events, one-off events, so when we have a new idea, we just put it under the First Friday umbrella.”
Beyond larger-scale festivals and monthly fixtures, plenty of businesses on and around Main Street draw crowds on weeknights and weekends alike.
The Eleventh Letter Writing Gallery hosts creative writing workshops, artist receptions and book talks. Gibson’s Bookstore, similarly, has a swath of author-related events covering every genre from horror to romance.
The Barley House offers trivia and live music performances, just as Arts Alley holds crafting nights and outdoor concerts. Penumbra teaches plant classes. Musicians, comedians and speakers regale audiences at The Capitol Center for the Arts’ Swope Theatre and Bank of New Hampshire Stage.
When Emma Stetson opened Wine on Main in 2022, she knew she wanted it to be more than a wine store.
The space she leases in downtown Concord, right between Gondwana and Lilise Designer Resale, has a tasting room in the back, bordering on Bicentennial Square. Most wine stores hold tastings a couple of times a month, Stetson said. But she set her sights higher.
Wine on Main keeps a packed schedule, with everything from tastings, wine education classes and food pairings to art workshops, book clubs and themed trivia.
“We’ve been able to build bridges and connect neighbors and bring more people together, which I really enjoy,” she said. “I also like that we’re just getting people to come to Concord and come downtown and go out.”
People venture to Wine on Main events from out of state, and Stetson also gets folks who are passing through Concord from elsewhere in New Hampshire.
She relishes the opportunity to collaborate with other business owners and community members on different events — anything to showcase the variety and vibrancy of downtown.
“In small business, you don’t necessarily have a ton of money or cash flow. People will ask for something, and I’m like, ‘Well, I might not have money available, but I have space. So please, that’s something that I can offer that we can use together,'” she said.
A hub for all?
While plenty of residents can walk downtown from their houses, plenty more need to drive — and find parking — in order to enjoy the area.
But for those who do not own cars, Main Street does not carry with it any sort of ease of access, especially with Concord Area Transit only running on weekdays.
For this reason, the annual Multicultural Festival moved from its original spot outside the State House to Keach Park in the Heights after the pandemic.
“I think that we realized: Why are we working so hard to get the New American community down here when, if we were at Keach Park, they could walk there? We would be in their neighborhood,” said organizer Jessical Livingston.
Initially, organizers worried that the festival would lose attendees, notably from the people who might stumble upon it when they happen to be downtown. The opposite has proven true.
“We realized the New Americans can’t get downtown, but the people who support the festival will drive up to the Heights to go there,” she added.
The U.S. Census identified the Heights neighborhood as one of the most racially diverse in the state. It felt like the most fitting place for the event to make a home. Ultimately, “a no-brainer,” according to Livingston.
“There has been a lot more diverse participation in the festivals downtown, but it’s mostly in terms of performers and food vendors,” said Livingston. “Those are people who have more accessibility than others. It’s the transportation. I mean, our public transportation is just shameful. Like, it doesn’t run on the weekends. It doesn’t run late enough.”
She still values downtown for many reasons — and appreciates the influx of activity bringing people to Main Street.
“It’s cool to have a vibrant downtown, but historically speaking and identity-wise, like Concord is a city of villages, and that’s part of our historical identity,” she said. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be having events in all of the neighborhoods.”
To that end, Martin said that InTown has long-term dreams of expanding its events to Penacook Village.
“There seems to be more businesses popping up over there, and that’s what we’re about is supporting small businesses,” Martin said.
Endless potential
When it comes to the communal opportunities downtown, the Stoyles remain committed to cultivating the environment in which they want to live.
“I think anyone with a dream and passion can bring a really cool event downtown,” said Alex.
The New Hampshire Book Festival is a prime example. As the nonprofit’s team prepares to launch its third iteration of the event this weekend, Burack finds herself thinking back to that initial need she saw in the community.
“It’s almost like the area was just really hungry for something like this, something to gather around that was positive and happy and joyful, and that could just broaden your mind,” she said.
On a street dominated by retail, the experience isn’t rooted in shopping or consumption.
Rather, it’s about “gathering to listen to other people and think and wonder and just hopefully come away a little bit transformed,” she said.
