A crowd of more than 200 people turned out in Manchester Thursday night to hear state officials and Mayor Jay Ruais discuss the state's plan to sell the former Youth Development Center, which includes 150-acres of real estate in the city’s north end.
“Nothing should go into that place without having a conversation with you,” Ruais stressed as the two-hour meeting got underway.
The property along River Road has a long — and decidedly mixed — history. Once farmland owned by Revolutionary War General John Stark, and now the site of the 144-bed Sununu Youth Services Center, the property has for more than 150 years been the location of a facility that housed a range of young people: everything from truants to the state's most violent juvenile offenders.
It’s also the site where thousands of former residents allege incidents of severe physical and sexual abuse stretching back decades. Right now, the state is legally bound to sell the property and has already included an anticipated $80 million in estimated proceeds from the property sale in the current state budget. That money has been earmarked to flow to the fund for YDC abuse victims.
Throughout Thursday’s public meeting, state Administrative Services Commissioner Charlie Arlinghaus stressed that the state passed a law requiring the property — one of the largest open spaces remaining in Manchester — be sold as a single parcel, and that his job was to make that happen.
“Someone is going to bid on it,” Arlinghaus told the crowd. “There will be proposals and they will be evaluated. Exactly how they will be evaluated has not been set.”
Right now development of the parcel would be limited to single-family homes. But under new proposed zoning rules the city is considering, any developer who purchased the property would have more flexibility, including the possibility of constructing multifamily housing of up to nine units and retail or office spaces capped at 3,000 square feet per building.
“If you have been to someplace like Woodmont Commons in Londonderry — something similar to that is the rough vision,” said Manchester City Planning Director Jeff Belanger, before citing River Road’s capacity to handle increased traffic as one of several "limiting factors” the city’s planning board would consider as it vetted proposals.
A few who turned out Thursday voiced support for a mixed-use project.
“I’m really excited by this because I want to walk to coffee shops, and I want to walk to yoga,” said Carissa Foster, who said the prospect of less driving was why she and her husband relocated to Manchester from Auburn.
But far more spoke up at the meeting to voice concern about what any significant development would mean for the neighborhood.
“I get the feeling mixed-use is not something that people in Ward 1 want,” said Alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur.
Plenty of people at the meeting used the opportunity to air ideas not contemplated by the state, such as building a new city high school there, luring a new teaching hospital to Manchester, or even allowing the city to gain control over the land by offering the state municipal property in return.
“Is the swapping of another parcel of land — say the Derryfield Golf Course — in lieu of the property something that could be considered?” asked Bill Mortimer.
The state had a polite but consistent answer to any and all such proposals.
“We are going to sell the property,” said Arlinghaus, repeatedly noting that to do anything different would require action by lawmakers.
“We have to listen to the neighbors here. We have to respect the neighborhoods of the entire city but especially Ward 1, because that is where it is,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, a former state senator and city alderman.
But before any sale of the property takes place, the state will need to complete work on the planned replacement for the Sununu Center facility, which is being built in Hampstead. Arlinghaus told the crowd that’s not likely to take place until mid-2027.
