Law in the Marketplace: What’s Concord Really Like—Part II
Published: 08-12-2023 3:00 PM |
Joe Blow lives in Concord and owns a Concord-based company. He needs a marketing executive, and he wants to hire Mary Jones. He can pay her generously, but she lives in Darien, Connecticut, and he needs her to move to Concord so she can come to his office every day; she can’t work for Joe remotely. In the July 23 edition of this column, I suggested various basic information Joe could provide to Mary about Concord — for example, information about its location, its population, its role as New Hampshire’s capital city, and about travel from Concord to major cities like Boston, New York and Montreal. But what personal information about Concord should he provide to her — i.e., information about features of Concord daily life that make its residents love it? And what is Mary’s decision likely to be?
Obviously, to find out what Mary might love about Concord, Joe has to know what she loves about Darien; so obtaining that knowledge from her will have to be his starting point. However, no matter what she may say about Darien, here are some things he might want to tell her about Concord:
■Because Concord has a fairly large population — about 44,000 residents in the city itself, expanding to about 155,000 throughout Merrimack County — it has most of the major franchise stores Mary might like.
■Concord is a friendly town, and she will be able to quickly identify and join civic organizations in her areas of interest where she can meet people and make new friends if, as is likely, she doesn’t already know anyone in Concord.
■Concord has an independent movie theater — called the Red River Theatres — that anyone who lives in the Concord region and likes fine movies will love.
■Concord has a number of great bookstores, at least one of which qualifies as a major Concord institution.
■It has a great music store, called Pitchfork Records and Stereo, owned and operated by Michael Cohen. Mike is a genius in helping people find the music they want.
■It has several good restaurants.
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■Unlike many other towns of its size, Concord has a marvelous local daily newspaper — this newspaper, the Concord Monitor — to keep her currently abreast of town developments. Every year, the Monitor wins major awards for newspaper excellence. And at least a few days every week, excellent writers, many of them local, publish columns in the Monitor about economics, politics, history and even about gardening. (The Monitor didn’t ask me to mention it in this column, but neither did it object to my doing so.)
■Concord has a large and highly active non-partisan political activist coalition, called the Kent Street Coalition. In monitoring and taking action with regard to New Hampshire politics, it takes full advantage of its location less than a mile from the State Capitol. it will give a warm welcome to Mary if she wants to be politically active in Concord. So, too, would the New Hampshire New Hampshire Business and Industry Association and the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce and several partisan Concord activist organizations.
■If Mary likes skiing, she’ll be impressed that Concord is home to several Nordic trails with other Alpine trails a short drive away.
■It has an excellent public school system, a leading private boarding school (St. Paul’s School), and New Hampshire’s only law.
■It has a laid-back life style.
The bottom line: There are many features of private life in Concord that might attract Mary to move here from Darien. But, as many readers will know, Darien is an extraordinarily wealthy town — far wealthier than Concord — with dozens of topflight shops and restaurants. And it’s a short train ride from Manhattan. So, to persuade Mary to move here, Joe will have to work hard.
John Cunningham is a lawyer licensed to practice law in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He is of counsel to the law firm of McLane Middleton, P.A. Contact him at 856-7172 or lawjmc@comcast.net. His website is llc199a.com. For access to all of his Law in the Marketpla ce columns, visit concordmonitor.com.
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