7: Main Street and Urban Renewal

Urban renewal has a bad reputation in some circles in Laconia, but in the mid to late 1960s it was seen as a way to reinvigorate downtowns across the United States.

The federal Downtown Development and Urban Renewal Program, along with the local Winnipesaukee River Urban Renewal Project, began planning in 1962. Laconia’s City Council voted to move forward in 1965, and the first demolition of the old downtown structures took place in March 1967, with the razing of the Cormier Hosiery Mill on Union Avenue. The Baldi Block, the Avery Block, and the Salvation Army building on Hanover Street were also demolished in 1967.

Completed in 1975 at a cost of $7 million, Laconia’s Urban Renewal Project left half of downtown as an uncovered pedestrian mall. In 1994, the pedestrian mall was abandoned, and Main Street reopened to one-way vehicular traffic. A quarter-century later, several of the former retail anchor stores, shoes, clothing, and hardware, have been supplanted by free-standing malls and, more recently, by electronic shopping. Downtown Laconia has now re-emerged as a cultural hot spot, offering theatre, music, various eateries, and specialty shops.