Quote:
Originally Posted by Airwaves
I think for the Weirs to survive they really need to remake themselves. I agree with SAMIAM that currently they are relying way too heavily on Bike Week. So any ideas how to save the Weirs from themselves?
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The Weirs is in a hard place now. In the last few years they've been the place for non-upscale people to go, while the rest of the lake slowly switched to upscale. Now the non-upscale crowd isn't spending money like it was until a couple years ago and that situation doesn't look like it's going to improve anytime soon.
The Weirs could join the rest of the lake in going upscale and survive for the short term (maybe longer), but history shows that when predominantly upscale destinations crash, they crash big and it takes them decades to recover. The things the upscale crowd considers "In" and "Out" can change overnight sometimes, depending on what's going on in the world and what trends the talking heads decide to promote. There were a lot of predominantly upscale destinations in NH that collapsed when the car became more popular than the railroad, and paved roads didn't serve the same places as the rails did.
Weirs could do well if they capitalized on the current recession by assuming non-upscale families still want a scenic retreat if only it were affordable, and make themselves the kind of place where southern NH's growing population can go on a budget, and without spending a lot of gas money to get there.
A few years from now they could benefit from the
revitalization of regular passenger service on the railroad. The line in the Weirs goes all the way to Boston via Tilton, Concord and Lowell (it is basically an extension of the Lowell line that goes all the way to Lincoln via Plymouth). Right now they're hoping to get commuter service on the line extended to Nashua by next year, Manchester in 2 years, and Concord in 3 years. If gas prices keep going the way they're going (which is likely,) it's reasonable to assume that when passenger trains return to Concord, people in Laconia will be asking for further extension of the service. Recently the Citizen ran a story about one of the boards in Laconia already talking about that.
For more info, visit the
NH Railroad Revitalization Association.
This is an interestng tidbit from their web site:
New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority Created
With a special city hall signing in Nashua, the governor of New Hampshire created a rail authority that not only will oversee commuter rail into Nashua, but also its expansion, as well as any other commuter rail service in the State of New Hampshire.