For City Councilor Randy Filiault, the impact of the upcoming downtown infrastructure project on businesses is top of mind. Entrepreneurs in the planned construction zone, he says, are the backbone of Keene.
Their pleas drove him to suggest to the City Council in early December that the $17.4 million overhaul be delayed.
This prompted a flurry of discussion and a committee recommendation to postpone, setting the stage for a council vote Thursday on whether to push the project a year from its planned spring start date.
Proponents of doing so say it could save downtown businesses. But those against postponing fear it could raise the final price tag, as has occurred before.
Meanwhile, City Manager Elizabeth Dragon announced last week that Keene intends to reapply for a multimillion-dollar federal grant to help fund the three-year project, adding another layer to the discussion. Keene was denied the money last year, but staff say the city’s chances of receiving the grant this time around are more likely.
Regardless of whether the project is delayed, staff have said the city plans to reapply for the grant and will seek council approval to do so on Thursday night.
The case for delay
At a meeting last June of the council’s Municipal Services, Facilities and Infrastructure Committee — when councilors learned the city did not receive the federal grant — Filiault implied the project still needed to move ahead.
“The reality is the pipes and infrastructure down there is still 100 years old and that’s not going to change,” he said at that time.
“So hopefully there’s more grants down the road, but we can’t just pack our bags and say, ‘No,’” Filiault, who represents the entire city as a councilor at-large, added.
Although Filiault said he still feels the infrastructure replacement driving the project must happen, the pleas of downtown business owners convinced him delaying the work a year makes sense. He said the old pipes have another year in them.
“When you hear from two dozen of your business owners that make up downtown Keene, for me, that was huge,” he said.
“We’re not talking one or two business owners … collectively, when you look at those 24 business owners, they make up a huge amount of Keene’s employment base.”
He noted that Keene’s downtown is integral to the city.
“Downtown Keene is the backbone of Keene, that’s what Keene is. Most people come to Keene, you know, for our unique downtown, we don’t have an ocean like Portsmouth does, or, you know, major shopping like maybe in Manchester, or Nashua does,” he said.
Several business owners spoke at a December meeting of the council’s Finance, Organization and Personnel committee in favor of the delay.
“When you’re done, like, polishing this downtown it’s going to be nothing if it’s empty,” said Alex Lesser, who owns Cholly & Waldo’s on Central Square.
Filiault, who feels the grant reapplication is another reason to delay, has also cited concerns about the impact of Trump-promised tariffs on the economy, plus the recent rise in property taxes, as secondary concerns.
However, other taxpayers have voiced concerns about the project’s cost continuing to rise.
The project’s anticipated price tag has swelled dramatically since an estimate in 2021 predicted it would be under $10 million. In 2023, the estimate rose to roughly $14 million, and then to the $17.4 million the city now anticipates.
City staff have previously attributed these increases primarily to rising inflation in recent years.
When asked if he sees the cost of the project being even higher a year from now — considering it has roughly doubled in the past 2½ years — Filiault said he thought from the start $7 million was unrealistic.
“I never thought that was a viable estimate, not for a second. So saying it doubled — I mean, I’m extremely skeptical of that,” he said. “I never thought it was a $7 million project; that was some initial numbers that were thrown out there, not based on a heck of a lot. You know, once the project was look[ed] at more intently in the scope of the project, then it came back at about 17 [million].
“… Things go up, but not that much. I mean, nothing goes up that much.”
Filiault asserted that even though the cost could increase, it’s possible it could be lower at the end of a year-long delay.
“If interest rates come down 1 percent, you know, that could save over a million. So, you know, yeah, there’s a calculated risk. It could go up. It could come down.”
Filiault said he believes that after the year delay is up, the average taxpayer will be less burdened by construction costs than they would be if the project moves forward as planned, regardless of whether the city receives the grant money.
“I think the average taxpayer is going to benefit a year from now. I truly believe whether the [grant] goes through or not, other grants may come through. I actually believe the one-year delay will reduce the cost to taxpayers,” he said.
Although councilors on the City Council’s Finance, Organization and Personnel Committee voted 5-0 to move forward with the delay, two councilors expressed feeling less than positive about the situation.
Councilor Kris Roberts said he was voting for postponement “begrudgingly.”
“I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the city,” he said at the committee meeting last week. “If we give it more time … there’s always the possibility that something else can happen. You can have a blowback and it will have a worse effect on the downtown economy than if it started now.”
City Councilor Thomas Powers, who chairs the committee, noted to The Sentinel the years of discussion that have already happened on this project and said he wanted to see it move forward. He also expressed more worry about cost increases than Filiault did.
“It’s always a concern … given what the economy is and how pricing is going, but it’s just, it’s a given. Best analogy I can make to that is just go to the grocery store, and you can see you can’t get out of the grocery store for the same price you did last week. So it’s even more so when you’re talking about construction material.”
Although Powers said he respects the concerns of downtown business owners, this was not a driving factor in his supporting a delay. He voted in favor of postponing since he feels doing so makes sense for the city and its plans.
As for Filiault, he predicts the council will indeed vote to push back the project’s start.
“If I was a betting man, I would say the … chances of the council following the FOP recommendation would probably be pretty strong, but hey, you never know,” he said.
“Stranger things have happened.”
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