Claremont’s longtime economic development director departs
Published: 10-29-2024 6:01 PM |
CLAREMONT — When Nancy Merrill went to work for the city’s Planning and Development Department on North Street in 2004 as the business development director, she could see the challenges ahead right outside her office.
“Everywhere we looked there was rubble,” Merrill said. “The green next to the visitors’ center was rubble. Across the (Sugar) river, the mill buildings were falling down.”
In downtown, the Brown Block and Farwell Block were in need of repair, the roof of the nearby Sawtooth building on Main Street was collapsing and prospects to renovate the vacant former restaurant next to City Hall were nonexistent.
Twenty years later those same properties have new life, including Claremont MakerSpace in a portion of the Sawtooth. Other areas of the city have seen significant business investment as have the industrial, commercial and retail sectors.
Merrill, who resigned this month, helped bring about all of it, by selling developers and prospective businesses on Claremont, navigating the complexities of state and federal funding sources and tax credits, and guiding applicants through the city’s permitting requirements and zoning ordinances.
“Economic development takes time but now, put it all together and it really has been a great 20 years,” Merrill said.
Merrill, who declined to give her age, was working in real estate in Hanover when she took the job in Claremont, a city of 13,000 whose history she was familiar with having grown up in Lebanon, where she still lives.
Merrill served on the Lebanon City Council from 1989 to 1995 and was mayor for a portion of that period. Active in Republican politics, Merrill also co-chaired the late Sen. John McCain's presidential campaigns in New Hampshire in 2000 and 2008, but said her politics were not related to her Claremont job.
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“Claremont was really struggling for a long time through a period of decline,” Merrill said, noting that roughly 100 housing units were demolished in the late 1990s because their condition was deemed beyond rehabilitation. “There were a lot of things that were not in good shape.”
Former City Manager Guy Santagate hired Merrill and later promoted her to head the city’s economic development office in 2010. He said she grew into the job and became very good at identifying projects that could be completed successfully.
“She was involved in every major project we did,” said Santagate, who was city manager for 15 years before retiring in 2016. “She was a very valuable person in terms of getting projects done. Nancy was well-known and well-liked and it is a real loss for the city. I don’t know how they will replace her.”
Merrill’s last day was Oct. 18. The city has not named her replacement.
She said she did not have a letter of resignation, but was ready for “a new challenge. Twenty years is a long time and I thought it was time," said Merrill, who was earning $94,400.
Merrill believes the city was able to work more effectively and efficiently with developers and others after Santagate decided to put planning, economic development and the building department in one location at the Visitors’ Center on North Street.
“We had everything right there and what we heard from businesses all the time is they loved the setup we had there because they could talk to the business side, planning and zoning and building (department),” Merrill said. “They were talking to the same group of people from beginning to end.”
Alex Ray, owner and founder of The Common Man Family of Restaurants, was a catalyst for much of what has taken place in, and around, the downtown, Merrill said.
At the time, several turn of the 20th century mill buildings along Water Street were being targeted for demolition. Merrill remembers Santagate saying, “we have to find a way to rehabilitate those buildings.”
Merrill turned to Ray for a request for proposal.
“It is hard to expect someone to invest when you can’t even get an appraisal on a building and banks see vacant buildings all around,” Merrill said. “It was real commitment on his (Ray’s) part and I think got the ball rolling.”
The Common Man Inn, which is also home to Red River Technology and the Common Man Restaurant, opened around 2009. The Peterson building, also on Water Street, was slated for condominiums but the building remained vacant until years later.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Merrill met with developer Eric Chinburg, who bought the Peterson and constructed 83 market rate apartments called Monadnock Mills.
Merrill’s duties and responsibilities were wide ranging, from providing data, such as traffic counts, demographics, other retail locations in the city and local incomes, as she did with Runnings, now on Washington Street; to bringing together interested parties such as landlords, developers and small businesses.
Additionally, she was active in identifying and applying for grants and tax credits to help fund work on Opera House Square including the Farwell Block, Brown Block and the recently opened Claremont Creative Center, in a space that had been a restaurant before it closed 30 years ago.
Merrill said it was not hard to stay in Claremont for 20 years, a longevity that is uncommon among the city’s department heads.
“I stayed because I loved the work. I loved the people I worked with and the people in the community,” Merrill said. “It was great.”
Merrill has not decided what she will pursue next but was clear that she is moving on to new challenges.
“I still have another act,” she said.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached pogclmt@gmail.com.