Charlie Arlinghaus, commissioner of the state’s Department of Administrative Services, standing, tells the Executive Council he has received five offers to buy the Laconia State School property, but cannot share details about the offers. (Adam Drapcho/The Laconia Daily Sun photo)
Five interested parties have offered to buy the former Laconia State School property, but it will take some time before anything is publicly known about those offers.
That’s what Charlie Arlinghaus, commissioner of the state’s Department of Administrative Services, told Gov. Chris Sununu and the Executive Council at a meeting held Wednesday morning. The meeting was held at The Rocks, a facility managed by the Forest Society.
Councilor Ted Gatsas (District 4), long a critic of the way the state has handled the marketing of the property, prodded Arlinghaus as soon as he stepped up to the microphone.
“When will you have an answer of when you go through them, I hope I won’t get tired before you finish,” Gatsas said.
Arlinghaus said he’s limited by state law about how much he can disclose.
“The only information that we’re able to say publicly is that we received five offers, not bids, offers,” Arlinghaus said. The deadline for offers to buy the property was July 18.
Gatsas asked if negotiations would include the placing of a down payment, “big enough that someone can’t walk away,” to which Arlinghaus seemed to assent.
“I suspect that your concerns and mine are relatively similar,” Arlinghaus said.
The apparent impatience, at least on Gatsas’ part, is no doubt linked to the frustrating experience the state had with the last hopeful buyer of the roughly 220-acre parcel in Laconia, which once was the site of a facility that housed people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, later hosted a state prison, and continues to be the site of emergency dispatch infrastructure.
The state had entered into a purchase-and-sale agreement with would-be developer Robynne Alexander last year. Per the terms of that agreement, Alexander would have paid the state $21.5 million for the land, and would have turned it into a multi-use development featuring commercial and restaurant space, a resort hotel, health care facilities and 1,260 housing units. However, Alexander was unable to come up with the promised money, so the state, after agreeing to several extensions that started in September of last year and stretched to April of this year, put the property back on the market.
After the meeting, Arlinghaus said he will be evaluating all five of the offers and plans to report his findings to a nonpublic session of the Executive Council next month, and he would look to Sununu for guidance on which offer to begin negotiating with for a purchase-and-sale contract.
Arlinghaus emphasized offers would be evaluated on the totality of their plan, not just the purchase price.
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