Berlin, New Hampshire

construct next summer. The river walk is going to be in the same area as RiverFire and we’re hoping that this addition will enhance that event to make it even more successful.” Another interesting initiative within Berlin’s economic development agenda is a municipal snow melt project. “We are partnering with Burgess BioPower, the operator of the biomass facility in town on this project,” Wheeler remarks. “Their facility sits very close to our downtown, so we came up with this idea based on the fact that these power facilities generate a tremendous amount of excess heat, which is available for beneficial use. We were inspired by the community of Holland, Michigan, which is very similarly situated like the city of Berlin; it has an annual snowfall of about 70 inches a year. Back in the 1980s, Holland captured the excess heat from their power generating facility and created a snow melt system in their downtown. So, we’ve been working with Holland and an outside consultant and we’ve completed a feasibility study, we now know what it will take to make it possible.” “We want to build a snow melt system as a tool to help revitalize our downtown,” Wheeler continues, “in winter time, we get a significant amount of snow on the ground. Typically, we have six months of snow. We like the snow for winter sports; we’re surrounded by ski areas; we have snowmobiling, hopefully soon, ski jumping, and that’s all good, but when you want economic activity in your downtown, snow can be a deterrent. When we’ve spoken with Holland, they have told us that they’ve done nothing but expanded their snow melt system since the 1980s. The project has been a big economic driver for their community. Before they built it, they had a high vacancy rate in their downtown and since they built it, they have almost a zero vacancy rate. We have some empty buildings downtown and we would love to see a similar impact in our downtown that Holland has seen in their downtown. We believe it’s going to have a big effect on economic activity in the downtown.” Wheeler admits that Berlin will need some grant money for the system’s capital costs, and is looking at several potential sources of funding. “The best fitting program is called BUILD (Better Utilizing BERL IN, NEW HAMPSHI RE Providing Utility and Special Purpose Property USPAP-Compliant Valuations & Assessment Reports for Generation, Transmission and Distribution of Electric, Gas, Water, Oil, Telecommunications, Cable TV, Wireless, and All Forms of Renewable Energy. Regulatory, Policy, and Eminent Domain Consulting. Offices in Portsmouth and Lancaster, NH and Simpsonville, SC Phone: (603) 788-4000 / www.sansoucy.com Email: gsansoucy@sansoucy.com George E. Sansoucy, P.E., LLC