Ballpark is just the beginning
City undergoes riverfront makeover
Just beyond the new stadium: apartments, town houses and a hotel.
By ANNE RUDERMAN, Monitor staff, April 02, 2005 - 7:40 pm
MANCHESTER - In some ways, the excitement about the new Fisher Cats Ballpark starts 30 feet beyond the left-field wall.
That's about how far it will be to the wall of the 127-room Hilton Garden Inn, which is under construction alongside the park. And the hotel's not the end of it.
Set to open this week, the ballpark will anchor a $65 million riverfront development south of Granite Street that, when complete, will include a hotel, upscale town houses, a restaurant and two mid-rise apartment buildings, moving Manchester a big step forward in its quest to shed its rundown former-mill-city image and reinvent itself as something energetic and new. The hotel should be complete next January, and construction for the town homes is just getting under way.
"This particular portion of the riverfront was underdeveloped and truthfully relatively unattractive and unplanned,"said Manchester Chamber of Commerce President Robin Comstock. "So this ballpark, hotel and residential community are a cornerstone of Manchester's revitalization."
Carnivorous weasels
Named for carnivorous weasels, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats played their first season last year at Gill Stadium downtown while construction on the new park got under way.
The Toronto Blue Jays' Double-A team, the Fisher Cats won the Eastern League championship, drawing just under 3,200 people a game and developing a following. Fans have also started tracking players like pitchers Gustavo Chacin and Brandon League who have moved up to the majors.
But the 6,500-seat new stadium, with a kiddy park out back and a spectacular view of the Merrimack River from just about anywhere on the left-field concourse, is designed for the perfect summer night or Sunday afternoon. It's as user-friendly as can be: Even the indoor concession areas allow hot dog buyers to watch the game while they wait in line. (An earlier stadium design, which would have given the entire stands a view of the Merrimack and would have allowed home runs to plop into the water, was scrapped because of a Major League Baseball rule that home plate must face north or northeast).
"Our challenge is to get fans who don't care about baseball to just come out for a night of entertainment," said Bill Jabjiniak, who runs the city's downtown revitalization effort. The goal this season is to draw about 4,100 people a game.
Although Jabjiniak didn't have any numbers on the expected economic impact on Manchester, the hope for the $21 million stadium and surrounding development on an extension of South Commercial Street is certainly there.
When the Verizon Wireless Arena, home to the Manchester Monarchs hockey team, opened in 2001, it began pumping millions of dollars into the city, in spending both at the stadium and in restaurants and parking outside. Last year, the arena created $31.4 million in spending and added about 660 jobs, according to a study by Doug Blais, chairman of the sports management department at Southern New Hampshire University.
But the Fisher Cats will face some hurdles the Monarchs do not, starting with the weather.
"With hockey, if it's January in Manchester there's not a whole lot else to do, as opposed to July in New Hampshire," Blais said. "So the Fisher Cats have more competition for entertainment dollars than the Monarchs. Manchester also has a heavy French Canadian population, which is automatic hockey fans. The Fisher Cats really need to work to make it fan-friendly entertainment."
$12 million hotel
But it's just beyond the home run wall, that the rest of the 26-acre development begins.
Built on the site of the old Boston & Maine roundhouse, where engines were turned around and repaired, the six-story Hilton Garden Inn is designed for business travelers, with oversized work desks and plasma-screen TVs. It takes its look, including a clock tower and exposed brick, from Manchester's historic mill yards, according to David Roedel, a spokesperson for his family's development company.
The entrance is hidden from the ballpark, but its back patios extend out to the field, giving hotel customers the equivalent of an outfield box.
"If you hit a home run into left or left center, it lands on our patio or bounces off our building," Roedel said. According to the city, the 2.7-acre hotel will cost about $12 million.
To Roedel, the riverfront spot is attractive notwithstanding his fence-swinging neighbors.
"There have been no hotels built in downtown Manchester since 1985," he said. "We wanted to be a part of all the things that are happening downtown and sort of separate ourselves a bit from the airport hotels."
The hotel pays homage to its neighbors, too: The hot-tub, for instance, is shaped like home plate.
To the south, the stadium will be flanked by 45 town homes and a pair of six-story apartment or condominium buildings being developed by Eric Chinburg, who is also rehabilitating the Penacook tannery. The first town house should be complete in October and the town houses will also invoke Manchester's history in their design.
"We wanted it to be reminiscent of some of the mill architecture,"Chinburg said, "but at the same time want it to be modern. We want to pay tribute to the historical past, but make it clear it's being built in 2005."
Although the housing project is assessed at $30 million, Chinburg said it will probably cost between $40 and $50 million by the time it's complete.
Jennifer Quinlan, the corporate development director at Chinburg Builders, said the homes are being designed to draw couples and young workers as well as the empty-nest crowd.
"We generally want to attract young professionals and young couples before they have children, or increasingly the empty-nesters who really want to tap into the amenities of the city," she said.
Which is exactly who Jabjiniak from the city wants.
"People work in Manchester but the type of housing they desire has not been available in the past, so they look to the suburbs and we're trying to reverse that trend," he said. "The goal is to have people living near downtown with disposable incomes who are looking to live, work and play in downtown Manchester."
Great expectations
City planners have already started other projects near the riverfront development, including a southbound highway exit at Granite Street, and they are talking about converting a rusty out-of-commission bridge into a pedestrian walkway over the river. But the real challenge lies in the motley assortment of shuttered and half-alive historic buildings, known as the Gaslight District, that separates the ballpark from Elm Street.
"There's a great development opportunity between the Verizon Wireless Arena and the stadium that could be developed into a pedestrian-friendly area," Jabjiniak said. The challenge will be more formidable than the riverfront development though, mostly because the city, which owned the riverfront's 26 acres does not own the Gaslight District lots.
In the meantime, other riverfront businesses are just happy about who's moving in now.
Starfish Grill owner Peaches O'Rourke said the surf-and-turf family restaurant is bracing for sales to shoot up dramatically. Plus, being neighbors with a ballpark, O'Rourke said, seems like a good time. The restaurant will be promoting itself with baseball, giving kids with ticket stubs a free meal.
"It's fun to be in the atmosphere of baseball. It's such an American pastime," she said. A Manchester native who has lived in the city through its most depressed era, O'Rourke said the influx of people to the riverfront will be a boon her own business and the city at large.
"There will be a lot more traffic down through this way and people can see us and know where we are," she said. "We've been on a dead-end street for a long time."
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By ANNE RUDERMAN
Monitor staff