By PATRICK MEIGHAN
Staff Writer
Staff photo by Bob Hammerstrom Bruce Tasker, right, from Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., answers questions from Nashua area residents during an informational meeting Monday night, August 2, 2010, at the Welcome Center off exit six of the F.E. Everett Turnpike.
NASHUA – A half-hour into the drop-in informational session Monday, nearly 50 people already had shown up to browse the maps and charts and chat up the city, regional and federal officials on hand.
This was another turn of the screw in the decades-long process of building a cross-city roadway that would link Broad Street near the Exit 6 Welcome Center, where the session was held, with downtown neighborhoods.
Some of the people attending scoured maps to see how the Broad Street Parkway, in its current configuration, would impact their homes and neighborhoods.
But the biggest questions were these: When would the first shovel hit the ground signaling the start of construction, and when would traffic start rolling down a stretch of pavement 30 years or more in the making?
The answers, respectively: next spring and by the end of 2014.
The purpose of the informational session was to give people another chance to comment as an environmetal impact study is nearing completion. A similar open-house held in November wasn’t required but was scheduled by Mayor Donnalee Lozeau to provide an update on the project’s status, she said.
“This isn’t a formal public hearing, but this is a way we can obtain additional public input,” said Jamison S. Sikora, environmental program manager for the Federal Highway Administration.
One of the residents who spent time purusing the parkway map, laid out over a long table, was Scott Currier, of 10 Baldwin St. A new bridge on Baldwin Street would be part of the project, and Currier said he’s worried that runoff from the raised roadway would flood his home and property.
“I might be having a swimming pool in my basement when it rains or snows,” Currier said.
Currier has lived on Baldwin Street nearly his entire life and says he’s attended multiple hearings and meetings about the parkway, bringing his concerns to public officials.
“I’ve talked to him, and him, and him,” Currier said, pointing out planners and engineers among the officials at the Welcome Center.
He pointed out his lot on the map, not one of the bigger ones, and not one directly impacted by the road. But the construction is close enough, and Currier said he’s never been officially notified about public meetings or sessions concerning the project.
“I’m just a little guy on that street. That’s how I feel,” Currier said.
The highway administration, in about a month, will consider the input from the session in issuing a revised Record of Decision, a step needed for the project to proceed. The record is an affirmation that the project is the “least environmentally damaging practical alternative,” said Tim Roache, assistant director of the Nashua Regional Planning Commission.
A Record of Decision was issued in 1997, when the proposed parkway was still four lanes. Since then, the roadway has been scaled back to two lanes and its route slightly modified, especially in its eastern section where it crosses the Nashua River and connects to Pine Street.
Because of the changes, the orginal Record of Decision can’t be applied to the project, Roache said.
Meanwhile, the Nashua Regional Planning Commission and consultants Vanasse, Hangen, Brustlin Inc. of Bedford are wrapping up an environmental impact study of the new route.
Then a final design will have to be completed, said John Vancor, a former city engineer who is the city’s project manager for the parkway.
The project is expected to cost about $68 million and is being paid for in part by federal money and in part by a $37.6 million bond the aldermen approved in 2008. So far, the city has spent $14 million in federal money
More property will also have to be acquired; some lots already have been taken through eminent domain, including property that lay in the path of the old route but that no longer lies in the new path.
Construction would likely begin next spring with the removal of the former boilerhouse in the Millyard, Vancor said.
A grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will finance work at the city-owned Boiler House, a contaminated brick building that was once the engine for the former site of a textile mill.
Officials hope to save the adjacent chimney, a landmark that bears the word “Millyard” and lies in the middle of an area the city hopes the parkway will help open to redevelopment.
Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com.
