RESILIENT NH
profiles
Bringing to Life the Vision of a Revived City Marty Parichand and Todd Workman’s tenacity is creating a new Franklin BY L I I SA R AJ A L A
COLLECTIVE ENERGY and unrelenting determination can transform an idea into reality, as demonstrated by the seven-year, ongoing effort to develop Mill City Park in the city of Franklin. In 2014, Marty Parichand was scouting a nine-acre site along the Winnipesaukee River in the city that would be home to Mill River Park, New England’s first whitewater park. He teamed up with Todd Workman, a local investor who shared the same vision, and they hit the ground running “from day one,” Parichand said. They agreed that Franklin is a natural location for whitewater rafting, whitewater kayaking and other river sports. The city sits at the junction of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers where they form the Merrimack River. The city also was the former home to mills that dotted the shores of those very rivers, but it has seen economic hardship over the recent decades. So developing a whitewater park was seen as having a lasting economic ripple effect for the city of
8,600, with its potential to attract 161,000 visitors and $6.8 million of direct spending to the region, according to a 2015 report. PERSONAL INVESTMENT Parichand and Workman first attempted to build Mill City Park by themselves. Parichand, who had left a lucrative job working as an avionics engineer and program manager for a Department of Defense contractor, tried to obtain a conventional loan to start the park’s development, but quickly learned he could not pull it off alone. Building the park would require raising private and corporate funds, exploring economic development and federal grants, and a lengthy process to design the construction of Mill City Park’s land and riverbed structures and receive the necessary permits. “We were lucky to find Marty,” says Workman. “When you have a creative concept that seems like a pie-in-the-sky project, most places would form a committee and peck away for a cou-
Since 2014, Marty Parichand has driven efforts to develop a whitewater park that could attract $6.8 million of direct spending to the region. Franklin sits at the junction of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers where they form the Merrimack River—a natural location for whitewater rafting, whitewater kayaking (see Parichand at right) and other river sports. (Photo by Allegra Boverman) 12 RESILIENT NH 2021
