Janet Garcia bought her property in Warner back in 1977. Moving from Atlanta, Georgia, she chose Warner because of its rural feel.
The town hasn’t changed much over the decades she’s lived there. Aside from a small commercial area with a smattering of retail and convenience stores, it persists as a relic of New England’s small-town charm.
A proposed development that went before the town’s zoning board in late June stood to threaten that way of life, Garcia felt. The three-story, 34-unit workforce housing project drew criticism from residents who, like her, want to curb rising taxes, stave off traffic congestion and preserve what they call “the spirit of Warner.”
Waving a hand toward the project renderings at the zoning board meeting, Garcia called the development “horrible.” To her, it looked like a storage facility or a hotel.
“I’ve been here for over 40 years,” she said. “That’s gross for this town.”
Zoning board members ultimately sided with the majority of residents who opposed the project during public comment, rejecting its application for a special exception to develop a residential building in a commercial zone. The developers have 30 days to appeal the decision; unless they do, the project is dead.
Members threw out a handful of reasons to justify the dismissal: The town had spoken against it. The town’s character would be “negatively impacted” by such a prominent, boxy building near the entrance to Main Street. The structure’s size and parking lot would pose the risk of runoff into the nearby Warner River.
A hesitance to build more housing is hardly new in Warner, a town of about 3,000 people. Residents have historically met proposals for more sidewalks, public transportation and housing developments with widespread and fiery opposition.
As residents in towns like Warner fear the potential of new developments to strip away their communities’ character, New Hampshire’s limited housing supply is straining to meet the state’s needs and demands.
State lawmakers say they’ve had enough — and they intend to strongarm municipalities into allowing more building. They passed several bills this year that would take back zoning control from municipalities, including one that would force cities and towns to approve multi-family residential developments in commercial districts, like the project Warner shot down.
“The housing crisis is not showing any signs of slowing down, and Granite Staters are suffering for it,” Rep. Alissandra Murray, a Manchester Democrat, said during the public hearing on House Bill 631, which she sponsored. “We need to take radical action now to stop this problem from getting even worse.”
From Garcia’s perspective, in the face of public opposition, small-town governments shouldn’t force new developments — much less the state government.
“I understand you have to have rules,” she said. “But if most people don’t want their life, the quality of their life, to change, they should have a say in it.”
A split board
The heads of the zoning board — chair Barbara Marty and vice chair Derek Narducci — didn’t care for the project. It was bigger than they wanted, and they worried about water runoff that might impact the Warner River wetlands.
Still, they argued, they had a responsibility to cast their votes in its favor. Their personal feelings aside, it met the requirements for a special zoning exception.
“The use itself is essential and desirable to the town,” Marty said. “We need affordable housing. We have apartments that are less expensive than what the rent would be here, but some of those apartments are pretty sad.”
The ill-fated workforce housing project, proposed by developers at the Concord Area Trust for Community Housing (CATCH), would have stood next to the Dunkin’ Donuts off Route 103, which branches off of Exit 9 on Interstate 89. Most of Warner’s other retailers have also set up shop in that commercial area: There are two gas stations along the main road, and opposite the Dunkin’ is a shopping center with a state liquor outlet and, further back, a Market Basket and a hardware store.
Though Marty and Narducci struggled with their decision, the three board members who voted against the special exception coupled their own concerns with those of the town.
Jan Gugliotti, who made the motion to deny the project, argued that the board has a duty to represent those who elected them and shouldn’t arbitrarily approve a new development that residents were against.
“The town has told us this is exactly what they don’t want,” Gugliotti said. “If somehow this did get rammed through, I think there would be such a backlash in this town. There would be so many really angry people on Facebook and everywhere else that we probably would never be able to use the word ‘workforce housing’ again in this town.”
Lucinda McQueen and Beverley Howe voted with Gugliotti, agreeing with her premise that the project was not “essential or desirable” for Warner.
They echoed the concerns of a handful of people who came to the final public hearing and asked the board to vote it down. Some were most worried about the environmental impacts on the river. Others feared it’d draw more families into town, hiking education costs. Like the Garcias, however, the resounding complaint was that the building simply wouldn’t fit the town of Warner.
Among the CATCH development’s few vocal supporters was town moderator Ben Frost, who worked for New Hampshire Housing for 18 years. During public comment, Frost, also a former chairman of the Warner Planning Board, said the project met requirements set forth by the town’s zoning ordinance. He also called on the town to help out on the housing front.
“We have this crisis of housing affordability in the state,” Frost said in an interview. “And no, it’s not Warner’s responsibility to solve the entire problem, but it does have a responsibility to do its part.”
Dramatic change
As part of its ruling, the zoning board cited a community survey from last year that gathered opinions from roughly 400 people on housing issues. About 95% of respondents signaled that they prefer to live in single-family homes. Only eight people listed large apartment buildings as one of their preferred housing options.
But local input does not carry as much weight at the state level. Despite New Hampshire’s ideological penchant for local control, lawmakers say the housing crisis is getting out of hand — enough so that bipartisan support in the State House pushed through legislation this year that could limit local zoning authority.
Many in the Republican-led Legislature, like Barrington Rep. Len Turcotte, oppose wedging the “heavy hand” of state government into local issues. Turcotte argued during the floor debate that municipalities should be left to decide their own best interests and issued a “cautionary warning.”
“In the years to come, should these type of bills regarding local control move forward, your towns and cities will change dramatically, not for the better and without your ability to stop it,” he said.
Even so, enough conservatives in the House and Senate joined Democrats to pass a bill to allow multi-family housing in commercial zones.
Murray’s bill, if signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte, would go into effect in July 2026, meaning that if CATCH were to propose the same development next year, it might not even go before the zoning board in Warner.
Tom Furtado, president and CEO of CATCH, is weighing that possibility. He said he believes the board’s decision was “not correct,” and CATCH still has a few weeks left to appeal, but he wasn’t confident that his project — or anything like it — would ever be approved.
“No one has ever done one in Warner,” he said, “and it sure looks like no one ever will.”
Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at [email protected].
