A Black Lives Matter protest more accessible to those in the disabled community is being organized for next Friday in Portsmouth.
Victoria Austin and her husband Brent were on their screened-in porch, having a nightmare conversation. Their son, Clyde, died unexpectedly at home at just 16-months. Because of the pandemic, they couldn’t talk about arrangements in the warmth of their Derry home, so to keep everyone safe they were meeting with a funeral home director in the cool October breeze.
The majority of clients who had committed to projects opted to back out due to uncertainty about having someone else in their house. But unlike many other professions -- most anything indoors comes to mind -- the lull for contractors was only a blip in the grand scheme of things.
Greg Baier, owner of Knollstone Contracting in Concord, saw business plummet early on during the pandemic, but it quickly sprang back.
Overnight camps that serve thousands of young people and generate millions of dollars for the New Hampshire economy are expected to resume operations this summer, a year after the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered many of them for the first time in decades.
Guidelines approved by the New Hampshire Economic Re-Opening Task Force and awaiting Gov. Chris Sununu’s approval set out precautionary steps the camps must take, including testing, health screening, use of face masks and social distancing.
New Hampshire lottery sales, particularly from online games, are surging during the pandemic, and with that increase comes a jump in another statistic — the number of problem gamblers who seek assistance for a disorder that can destroy lives.
The National Council on Problem Gambling received 443 calls to its 24-hour helpline (800-522-4700) from New Hampshire last year, compared to 337 in 2019. That’s an increase of 24 percent.
It’s been a slow year for bankruptcy lawyers in NH, but Blackwood predicts that will soon end. “We’re in the middle of a tough nine to 15 months, then there’s going to be a giant wave.”
It is an assessment shared by other lawyers and analysts who crunch the numbers.
The infusion of government money into personal and business bank accounts; a federal moratorium on foreclosures and evictions that continues to Dec. 31; limited access to the courts; and what Blackwood describes as a general atmosphere of “forbearance” have all combined to keep the cork on a potential flood of foreclosures and bankruptcies.
Despite the economic uncertainty wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and already low interest rates driven down further by the public health crisis, local banking leaders say 2020 wasn’t all bad.
“Still, we’ve had a record year for the bank in terms of growth, in terms of lending, in terms of earnings,” says Mark Bodin, president of Savings Bank of Walpole.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a surge in buyer demand, most of it from out of the immediate area. Without a corresponding increase in available properties, selling prices jumped as buyers competed to be the winning bid.
COVID also ushered in a new way of doing business with virtual showings, Zoom discussions and a host of safety protocols that would have seemed unimaginable when the year began.
Across sectors, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted businesses large and small, even forcing some local favorites to shutter for good. But for the green energy economy in the Monadnock Region and beyond, there could be a bright spot on the horizon.
According to a report published in December by the Solar Energy Industries Association, solar energy accounted for 43% of new U.S. power capacity additions through the third quarter of 2020. And the industry expects to install more than 19 gigawatts of solar this year, which is enough to power more than 3.6 million homes — a 43% increase compared to the previous year.
While it’s too soon to tell what the hard figures for 2020 will be for agriculture, trends emerging from the area tell a complicated story. One that Beth Hodge of Echo Farms and current Cheshire County Farm Bureau president says is “a year of highs and lows.”
With consumers looking for safe alternatives to grocery stores, the clear winners this year were produce-based businesses.
Innovation and the ability to pivot and adapt to the changing marketplace became more important than ever before for manufacturers in 2020. Many Monadnock Region manufacturers predict growth in production in 2021 because of the pandemic and the varying demands it has created.
“It was an unconventional year, and it was a challenging year, but it was a good year,” notes Whitney Brothers Company President Mike Jablonski.
Uncertainty is something that many retail owners are dealing with, both around the country and throughout the Monadnock Region. Since coronavirus shut down large swaths of the U.S. economy in March, the retail industry has been rocked. While online mega-retailers, such as Amazon, are seeing profits skyrocket, most retailers have seen a sales slump. Overall, it is estimated that the American retail market will drop more than 10% in 2020, a more significant fall than in 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis.
For some, keeping active amidst an ongoing pandemic has posed many challenges, but for those operating various fitness centers in the Monadnock Region, a whole new set of obstacles are stretching them thin.
This past summer, local gyms and yoga studios were able to ease back into in-person activities, which helped these businesses gain momentum. But as the winter approached — and the second wave of the pandemic hit our area — gym and yoga studio attendance has fallen by the wayside.
In the nine-plus months since COVID-19’s torrent upending of everyday life, Michael Polizotti, a policy analyst at the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI), has concluded that, despite the economic recession induced by the coronavirus, the ability to draw comparisons between the current state of local economies and other eras of financial turmoil isn’t simply apples-to-apples.
The pandemic has impacted every level of tourism in New Hampshire, from leaf peeping to the 2021 ski season. Visitors are faced with state regulations both in New Hampshire and often in their home state as well.
It’s because of these challenges that Lori Harnois, New Hampshire Tourism Director, says, “The Division is not forecasting travel or spending for the 2020-21 winter season. Similar to summer and fall, due to COVID-19, there are many unknowns and variables with the potential to impact visitation and visitor spending, making it difficult to project those figures.”
While some sectors have seen business plummet due to the pandemic, the construction industry seems to be moving ahead as usual in New Hampshire. Both residential and commercial construction projects are still in demand.
“We’ve definitely still seen a steady set of pre-development activity and applications” for funding for commercial projects, notes Katherine Easterly Martey, executive director of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA). “That’s been good.”
The beginning of the year is usually the busiest time for gyms, with New Year’s resolutions resulting in new gym devotees and people coming in from the cold to work out. The recent boom in-home workout options like Peloton and Mirror makes competition fiercer, so gym owners are working hard to make clients feel safe despite the ongoing pandemic.
Trends from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI) suggest that New Hampshire’s food insecure households recovered from the Great Recession slower than the rest of the nation -- a trend that has worsened in the state as complications from the coronavirus crisis continue to arise.
NHFPI hosted a virtual event Wednesday (Feb. 3) featuring guest speakers from the New Hampshire Food Bank and New Hampshire Hunger Solutions in an effort to understand trends of food security in the midst of the pandemic. The presentation, titled Food Insecurity and Economic Conditions During the Great Recession and the COVID-19 Crisis, highlighted New Hampshire residents’ ongoing struggles with food insecurity and endeavors to combat the issue.
State Trooper Michael Arteaga was parked in an unmarked cruiser on the north side of the Hampton tolls on a clear spring evening in 2018, when he noticed two men driving north in a late model Cadillac sedan with Connecticut plates.
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The trooper eventually turned on his blue lights and had the Cadillac pull over, ostensibly for going 67 mph in a 50-mph zone and for making a lane change without timely use of signals. What followed was an interrogation and a search that turned up contraband.
