Claremont, NH

Smuttynose

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Things are so tough in Claremont, NH that the city literally can't give away commercial land. The city launched a competition in May called the 'Perfect Place Challege' to give away a lot for a buck in their new industrial park to the most promising business to apply. Unfortunately, despite clever advertising, the city hasn't found a single taker. Claremont is a city of about 14,000 near the VT border that once thrived with textile mills and other businesses, but has since fell on hard times. Recently, Claremont has improved and finally the city has developers redeveloping their old downtown mills into condos,restaurants, and even an inn. But, for now downtown Claremont is so abandoned it looks like something out of a movie. But if you've got a buck and a business plan it might be the place for you.

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Perfect Place Challenge Website
http://claremontnh.com/advantage/

Claremont still hasn't seen a Perfect Place application
http://www.unionleader.com/article....rticleId=321151b6-66f1-4e49-9013-674c732caf89
 
I remember passing through Claremont once around 1990 on a daytrip from my family's vacation place near Woodsville. I remember being surprised that there was a small city with a rather dense downtown in that part of New Hampshire. On another note, in 1991 when I was flying from Frankfurt to Boston returning from a high school exchange trip in Germany, our group sat behind a guy, who was the uncle of a girl in our school, and was Mayor of Claremont in the early 1980s.

Unfortunately, according to the State of New Hampshire, it hasn't experienced much growth over the past 50 years.
 
Claremont was the lead plantiff to sue the state in the 90's seeking more state education aid for poor districts. And though the lawuit was successful, it was terrible PR for Claremont and has left the city with a kind of stigma. Claremont is one of the poorest towns in the state and at one time had the highest tax rate in the state as well. More recently, the city has managed to find investors to redevelop their impressive but long abandoned downtown mills, and the city gov't there really seems on the ball, so I do think Claremont is headed in the right direction.

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Claremont Mills, which are now undergoing redevelopment

Are happy days here again for Claremont?
http://www.nhpr.org/node/9207

Claremont Comeback? Part 2
http://w2.knowledgeplex.org/news/172356.html
 
I drove through Claremont, NH last week. Downtown, there were about five empty storefronts in a row. Not exactly a boom town.
 
Small Steps...

Tech firm coming to city
Computer company to occupy redeveloped downtown mill building

Matthew McCormick
Staff Writer

An Upper Valley-based high tech firm on Wednesday announced plans to relocate its corporate headquarters from Lebanon to Claremont's Wainshal mill building in a move city boosters said is key to downtown revitalization efforts.

Other key developers of the city's long-vacant mills said that the new tenant likely will be the linchpin that ensures the success of the district, moving the timeline for completion of the whole project up by years.

"This is a big day for the city," Mayor Scott Pope said of Red River Computer Company's presentation to the city council at its meeting Wednesday. "This changes the whole complexion of downtown ... It makes these mill buildings symbols of the future of Claremont."

Red River, a reseller of customized computer equipment, largely to the federal government, will be part owner of the six-story, 60,000-square-foot structure.

Upon council approval in January, the company will sign a purchase, sale and development agreement with two other mill district developers to revitalize the structure.

The partnership will include Rusty McLear and Alex Ray, the principals of Woven Label LLC, and John Illick of Sugar River Development LLC, who also own and are renovating nearby Petersen and Woven Label buildings.

Work on all three buildings - the cornerstone of the city's effort to revive commercial activity downtown - will begin in May and is slated for completion 12 months later, Illick said.

It is a timetable that puts the completion of the mill district project, which will bring in $25 million in private investment, years ahead of schedule.

While both Peterson and Woven Label were set for construction next year, city officials originally had planned to complete the Wainshal separately because of the difficulty of finding a tenant for the 30,000 square feet in the building's top three floors.

Illick said Red River's 60 New Hampshire employees - a number the company hopes soon will climb to 100 - will provide customers for the Common Man restaurant that will be housed in the Woven Label and buyers for the 47 condominiums that will go in the Peterson building.

And City Manager Guy Santagate said the spin-off will not be limited to the mill district.

"To say we are enthused is an understatement," Santagate said. "We are confident this project has the potential to transform Claremont for the better."

That is a vision shared by Red River, which began looking to relocate out of its cramped, 10,000-square-foot headquarters in Lebanon's River Mill Complex about five years ago, CEO Rick Bolduc said.

"We wanted to be close to a downtown area that was revitalizing ... we didn't want to go to an established community where the growth was all tapped out," Bolduc said.

Formed in 1995 with just four employees, Buldoc said the company now employs nearly 100 people in offices in Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina and California and boasts $100 million in annual revenues.

The company, which counts among its major clients the Army, Navy, Department of Homeland Security and NASA, still is growing at a rate of about 35 percent annually, Buldoc said.

That likely will mean an additional 10 to 20 hires annually at its Claremont headquarters, which houses a portion of Red River's sales team as well as its accounting and contract departments, he said. Though both Buldoc and Mann declined to discuss exactly how much those positions will pay, they told the council that they are "upper-end" jobs.

"All of our positions are really nicely paid," Mann said in an interview prior to the meeting.

Both Mann and Buldoc said they looked forward to tapping the area's labor pool and partnering with local educational institutions, such as Granite State College and the Sugar River Technical Center, to train them.

At first, Red River plans only to fill the 20,000-square feet in the building's top two stories and does not have plans for the remaining 10,000 it will own in the building.

The bottom two floors of the Wainshal will house an indoor pool and 34 rooms of a 44-room Common Man Inn that also will occupy the top floor of the Woven Label building.

The final floor will be used for office space.
 
Claremont: Envision prosperity

By KRISTEN SENZ
Union Leader Correspondent
7 hours, 24 minutes ago

CLAREMONT ? After years of struggling to attract investment, the city is about to undergo a major transformation, and planners want to make sure the sleepy city is ready for its new life.

The first of two public forums, where residents will be asked to envision the future of Claremont, is scheduled for next Thursday. It's the first step in updating the city's 16-year-old master plan, which interim city planner Gerald Coogan said yesterday is crucial to the city's ability to handle the residential and commercial growth expected over the next five years.

The forum will be held from 6 to 9 p.m.

in the multi-purpose room of the Maple Avenue School. "Claremont has made a lot of progress in the last five years, and there's a lot more progress to be made," Coogan said. "It's much more likely that we'll be able to accommodate things if we have a plan, rather than being aimless about it." Massive mill buildings in downtown Claremont that have been vacant for about 50 years are about to receive a $25 million infusion of private investment.

This spring, three such buildings along the Sugar River will be transformed from empty eyesores with smashed windows to a mixed commercial and residential building, a Common Man restaurant with hotel rooms on an upper floor, and an office building with retail space.

Another nearby mill will be converted into a municipal parking garage, and construction will start this summer on a pedestrian bridge across the Sugar River.

The city also is revamping Mill and Water streets with new sewer and water lines, sidewalks and lighting.

Redevelopment will also begin in about two weeks at the Brown Block, a dilapidated downtown building that received federal funds four years ago.

"They gutted the whole inside of the building and then we ran out of money," City Manager Guy Santagate said, explaining that the city has now obtained more than $2 million to finish the project.

Also in the works is the remediation of a contaminated site on Washington Street, the city's main commercial thoroughfare. Lowe's Home Improvement is cleaning up the site in preparation for the development of a new store, which will be built next door to Home Depot.

Santagate said it's exciting to see the hard work of so many city employees and volunteers finally paying off.

"It'll be a historic event, and that's not an overstatement," he said of the upcoming redevelopment projects. "It'll change the face of Claremont and it'll change the way people look at Claremont. All the pieces are there for boom time."
 

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