Feb. 1 — To the Editor:

Do you understand the complicated nature of the McIntyre Project? If you don’t you’re in good company. We’re all given a right to speak, to voice or venture an opinion. But how can our words have meaning or carry weight when we don’t understand the facts? It seems many of us don’t have a grasp of what can happen; what can’t happen; and what likely will happen when it comes to the McIntyre Project. You can change that.

The National Park Service may give us (The City of Portsmouth) the McIntyre building with a parcel of land surrounding it. The city then enters into a public/ private partnership, leasing it all to a developer. The project will come with known and unknown problems. The “known” will be the covenants - including the guidelines (The Secretary of Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation) that the developer will have to use when working on the McIntyre building & developing the surrounding property. Yes, there are flower boxes that can’t be removed although it’s probable that the brick wall on Penhallow Street can be removed. The long list of guidelines of what can and can’t be removed is all laid out in an analysis written by Alisa McCann, Architectural Historian. That document is on the new city website pertaining to just the McIntyre project. Please take the time to read it. Our city staff is trying to make information available to us. Now the unknown - environmental contamination. It’s both in the building and outside throughout the parcel of land. Much of it is still unknown. So here’s your present all nicely wrapped up with a bow. What’s inside the box? Asbestos? PCB’s? Lead? TCE? And the entire present can’t be opened to reveal all the bad goodies inside until you accept it. That’s why our preferred developer, Redgate/Kane (SoBow Square, LLC) has already allotted serious funds in their proposal for the mitigation of the environmental contamination. Remember that this developer is not a nonprofit organization. But they are behaving in a responsible manner by allowing that these monies would be set aside.

Can the McIntyre building under any creative circumstance be torn down to build something new? The factual answer is No. Even if all the current possible partners disappeared and the National Park Service sold the building to a private developer, the McIntyre building would still be sold with covenants (a set of rules saying, “No You Can’t” with a little, “Yes You Can” thrown in). In fact, the entire parcel (land & building) would be given to the city with these rules & guidelines. As past mayor Tom Ferrini has stated, even if our council suggested a “pony farm” to the National Park Service because we as residents said we had to have a “ pony farm” the answer would be No. Just as the answer to “We’d like to rehabilitate the McIntyre building and have the rest of the parcel be 100% Green Space” would be NO. Why? Because if you look at early photographs of the parcel or maps of it in the 19th century, that part of downtown Portsmouth has always been fully developed. It’s been the nerve center or the heart of commercial Portsmouth. Good luck trying to justify it all be green space. No.

So this is just the tip of the iceberg of a huge complicated, but very rewarding project if handled properly. I have no personal preference as to what goes into the McIntyre building. I leave that to others. What I do know is that if we get this parcel from the Monuments Program, it will likely have a long narrow tunnel to travel through before it sees the light at the end. That light being hopefully a fabulous revitalized healthy heart for Portsmouth. I urge you to attend, as I will, the meeting at City Hall at 9 a.m. this Saturday Feb. 3. Or 6 p.m. on Feb. 8. Our elected officials, our city staff, and the team from Redgate/Kane are trying to help us all gain a better understanding of what we might have at the end of that tunnel. Please come so we can all be part of the equation that listens and learns enough to propel the project through that tunnel in the right direction – knowledgeably forward.

Paige Trace

Portsmouth