Committee has same concerns as last year
By JOHN KOZIOL
Staff Writer
LACONIA — For the second time in two years, the Naswa Resort’s site plan
application for Bike Week has hit snags over pedestrian safety and the fear of
stretching municipal emergency services too thin.
By a unanimous vote, the city’s Motorcycle Technical Review Committee on
Thursday voted to continue the Naswa’s application until after the resort had
conducted a survey of how its proposal to have 30 vendors, 34 parking spaces and
a 50-foot by 80-foot beer tent on its parking lot on the east side of upper
Weirs Boulevard would affect vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
The MTRC’s action had Naswa representatives Jim Lowell and Cynthia Makris
scratching their heads.
The decision came after Water Department Director Rodger "Mike" Matthewman’s
reminding the committee that "as the board remembers, this (the Naswa
application) was the really controversial one last year and we didn’t really
accept it."
The MTRC last February denied the Naswa’s application for 30 vendor spaces on
the grounds that public safety issues were not fully addressed and that, if
approved, the Naswa site might require an undue number of police officers to
patrol it and immediately adjacent areas.
After consulting with four of the six city councilors and Mayor Mark Fraser,
City Manager Eileen Cabanel said the MTRC may have overstepped its authority
because its denial of the Naswa application essentially set the geographic
boundaries for Bike Week which is the purview of the City Council.
Cabanel asked the MTRC to reconsider the Naswa application.
While the committee did meet to consider that request, it voted unanimously
to direct the Naswa to follow the appeals process and go to the Licensing Board
or re-apply to the MTRC with a new site plan.
The Naswa then went to the Licensing Board and that body, on a vote of 2-1
ruled that pedestrian safety concerns had been adequately addressed, and
approved the application.
As a condition of the approval, the Naswa agreed to erect pedestrian barriers
and fencing along the easterly side of the road and to extend both north up to
the Waldo Pepper property.
Despite the Licensing Board’s approval, Naswa owner Peter Makris later
decided not to have any vendors, saying the delay in getting the site plan
approved had cost him the opportunity to line up the vendors he wanted to have
there.
At Thursday’s MTRC, Lowell said the Naswa was willing to put up the barriers
and fencing and also, per city regulations, to put erect a chain-link fence
around the beer tent. The Naswa would also meet other conditions regarding the
number of private security officers who would be on hand and the installation of
soundproofing materials behind the stage in the tent, he said.
Laconia Police Lt. John MacLennan reiterated the same argument made last year
by his colleague Capt. Tim Cavanaugh on the Naswa application, saying it would
"put us behind" in the LPD’s being able to cover that area.
During Bike Week, which this year takes place from June 7-15, most law
enforcement and fire units are concentrated in or around the intersection of
Route 3 and Lakeside Avenue, which is about a fifth of a mile up from the Naswa,
said MacLennan.
There are no proper pedestrian walkways linking the Naswa property to the
activities up the road, he said, expressing concerns that the beer tent could
also generate additional pedestrian safety and other problems for emergency
agencies.
As presented, the Naswa plan was "just stretching us out too much. I don’t
think it’s an appropriate place for a beer tent," said MacLennan.
Asked whether he might support the application if the beer tent was
eliminated, MacLennan replied that "I’m not sure anything is totally
appropriate" on the Naswa site as to Bike Week vendors and activities because
they would invariably create more pedestrian traffic in a dangerous area.
Despite the Naswa’s agreeing to install barriers and fencing on Weirs
Boulevard, there was simply "no place" for pedestrians to walk in safety on that
part of the road, he said.
