By DAVID BROOKS, Telegraph Staff
Published: Tuesday, Jul. 6, 200
The Nashua region continues to lead the state in growth in the 21st century, with five of the state’s 10 fastest-growing communities sitting less than an hour’s drive from City Hall - but that doesn’t mean the picture is consistent throughout the area.
Consider Wilton and Temple, neighboring towns that both straddle Route 101 and both sit on the western edge of commuting distance to Boston. According to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, during the three years following the 2000 census, Temple grew more than eight times faster than Wilton.
“It would have been faster, except there isn’t much land available,” said Temple Road Agent Tim Fiske, a native of that town.
Between the census on April 1, 2000, and July 1, 2003, Temple grew by 10.6 percent, according to Census Bureau estimates. That’s the eighth-fastest rate in New Hampshire, according to an analysis by The Telegraph.
At the same time, neighboring Wilton grew just 1.2 percent, the slowest rate in the region except for urbanized Nashua.
“I can’t explain it,” said Linda Patten, a real estate agent with Joan P. Lemire Real Estate on Wilton’s Main Street, who sells property throughout the area.
Patten was surprised at the figures, saying she hadn’t noticed any difference in buyer attitudes or property availability among local towns.“I don’t know why Wilton hasn’t grown more. . . . It’s a mystery,” she said.
The mystery may be less than it seems, however: Growth estimates need to be taken with a grain of salt.
For one thing, it’s relatively easy for small towns like Temple to have big changes, because one or two subdivisions constitute a large percentage increase. Temple’s growth rate comes from just 138 more people, a number that would pass unnoticed in Nashua.
That’s partly why New Ipswich was the second fastest-growing town in the state during this time. It increased an eye-popping 14 percent from 2000 to 2003, exceeded only by Chester, which is filling with spillover from neighboring Derry.
But New Ipswich’s percentage growth translates into only 611 new people.
For another thing, these numbers are only estimates. They are made by the Census Bureau based on “administrative records” compiled by the communities, such as school enrollment, for more than 20,000 communities throughout the country.
Such estimates can be subject to error - it is not uncommon, for example, for New Hampshire and a given town to disagree about that town’s estimated population.
Still, keeping that in mind, the new estimates show some other interesting patterns in the region:
Once you’re built up, it’s harder to grow.
The region’s slowest growth rate by far was in Nashua, which increased only three-quarters of 1 percent. In fact, the Census Bureau estimated that Nashua shrank slightly in population between 2002 and 2003, although such estimates are even less reliable over short periods such as one year.
The city’s last open area, its southwest corner, has been largely subdivided. The days of huge new housing developments are past it.
Nashua’s experience is similar to that of nearby urban areas. Manchester, Keene, Lowell, Mass., and Lawrence, Mass., all grew less than 2 percent. Lowell actually shrank slightly over the past three years.
The region’s other slow-growth community was Greenville, which grew just 1.4 percent and is also estimated to have shrunk between 2002 and 2003. This former mill town is the geographically smallest community in New Hampshire, just 7 square miles, and has little room for new housing.
Proximity to Massachusetts is still important.
In absolute terms, the biggest growth in the region was in Windham, where almost 1,500 new residents have arrived since the census, twice as many as came to Nashua.
The town’s 14 percent growth was third highest in the state, while neighboring Pelham also had a high growth rate, almost 10 percent.
“We’re very convenient to Exit 3,” said Alfred Turner, Windham director of planning and development. “We’re actually probably doing fewer homes than we did during the 1980s, but what’s happened is there has been a slight switch from single-family houses to more senior housing.”
Explosive growth doesn’t have to continue.
Brookline was the region’s growth leader during the 1990s, when it increased in size by 75 percent, almost twice as fast as any other communitySince the 2000 census, it has grown 7? percent, a rate consistent with places like Mason and Lyndeborough and well below Litchfield or Mont Vernon.
Looking farther east, there’s Derry, which grew so fast in the 1970s and ‘80s that it became the poster child for explosive in-migration. Since 2000, it has grown less than 2 percent.
But slowing down is relative, of course - even when the census says things are getting quieter.
“Things really don’t feel like they’re slowing down,” said Richard Randlett, co-chair of the Brookline Planning Board, as he contemplated an upcoming agenda that included one new subdivision with 16 lots and another with 13. “They don’t feel slower at all.”
This story was originally published in the The Telegraph of Nashua, N.H., all rights reserved, nashuatelegraph.com.
© 2003, Telegraph Publishing Company, Nashua, New Hampshire
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