The water spilling down the stones beside Giuseppe's Pizzeria & Ristorante left Lake Waukewan on the far side of Main Street. It passed through an iron trash rack near Frog Rock Tavern and a concrete box culvert from the 1930s. Then it dropped into a deep penstock under the building at 62 Main St. and ran through a pipe that narrows from six feet to four. After that it went into a surge tank in the Mill Falls Marketplace parking lot, over a set of wooden stop logs, and down a masonry flume before it reached the falls.
Almost all of that system is about to be rebuilt. The Turner Group, which designed the project for dam owner Hampshire Hospitality Holdings, is aiming to start construction between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2026, according to the Laconia Daily Sun. Crews work in winter and stop for summer, so the people who will watch the job happen are the ones who live in Meredith year-round.
A Waterfall That Also Controls a Lake
The falls are the outlet works of the Lake Waukewan Dam. The canal was built to power the old mill with hydropower. Today the surge tank regulates the water level in Waukewan itself, as project engineer John Lavigne told the Select Board at its July 27, 2026 meeting.
That is why the state is involved. In 2021, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services Dam Bureau sent the owner a letter of deficiency. The letter classified the Lake Waukewan Dam as a high hazard dam and set specific deadlines to fix it. Lavigne also explained that the standard has moved since the mill was built. Larger rain events have pushed up flood discharge requirements, so the new channel has to carry normal flow and also meet the state's current flood standards. The system can only control the top five to six feet of the lake, which is the depth of the channel at the intake.
The Laconia Daily Sun's headline put the cost at $6 million to $8 million. A FEMA grant covers 65 percent, and Procaccianti Companies pays the rest. Because of the federal money, the job had to go out to public bid.
Stop by Stop, What Stays and What Goes
Here is the condition of each piece of the route the water takes, as the engineers described it to the town:
- The intake near Frog Rock Tavern and the pedestrian bridge. Two iron trash racks went in as a temporary fix. Lake debris collects there, and divers have had to clear it out from time to time. The permanent plan is a concrete structure with better racks that are easier to maintain.
- The box culvert below Frog Rock Tavern. This 6-by-6-foot culvert from the 1930s has always been underwater and is in very good condition. It is the one part that does not need updating.
- The penstock under Main Street and 62 Main St. Hermit Woods Winery & Eatery sits on top of this pipe. It is made of concrete sections that fit together but aren't watertight, and the joints have opened over the years.
- The pipe below the parking lot. The pipe narrows from six feet to four feet here. A 4-foot insert was added after an inspection found the pipe coming apart, and that insert is now corroding and collapsing.
- The old gatehouse in the Marketplace lot. It once held the wooden gate that controlled the lake for the mill. The gate had rotted completely, and divers removed it.
- The surge tank. It has an inner tank from the early 1900s and an outer tank added in the 1930s. Both are leaking and corroding.
- The wooden stop logs. The boards are held in place by corroding steel stakes. They will be replaced with a drop gate, so the lake will be controlled from the top of the water.
- The flume. Its masonry walls are in good shape.
- The waterfall. It was built from embedded stones covered with a layer of concrete. The channel bottom has eroded, and water can get underneath it into the restaurant.
The pieces that need replacing are hidden: the pipe, the tank, the stop logs. The two pieces people actually see, the flume walls and the box culvert at the top, are the ones in good condition. The waterfall is the one visible feature that gets real structural work.
Why the Work Starts at the Bottom
According to the minutes, the hardest part is getting equipment in without tying up the lower lot on Route 3, the Mill Falls lot and the municipal lot on High Street. The team's answer is to work in phases and keep the footprint in the village small.
Phase one begins at the foot of the waterfall and works on the flume and embankment. The channel gets relined. Stones on the right-hand side get removed, replaced and pinned with dowels, and a second wall goes in behind them under Giuseppe's patio. A new masonry wall will make the patio larger, and the area beneath it will be terraced.
Phase two moves uphill to the penstock. The old pipe won't be dug up. It will be filled with flowable fill, a material placed as a liquid that hardens without compaction. The gatehouse stays. The old surge tank will be filled, cut down to the level of the parking lot and paved over. A new tank goes on the opposite side of the lot, which will likely cost the lot a couple of parking spaces. Hermit Woods Winery has granted an easement so the new penstock can stay on private property instead of running under the public street.
Phase three crosses Main Street to the intake near Frog Rock Tavern. It adds a permanent trash rack structure and extends the box culvert with a precast section, with flowable fill on both sides.
The plan is to run phases one and two at the same time, which is when Meredith is most likely to lose some parking. No lane closures on Main Street, Route 3 or Route 25 had been announced in the project's public presentations.
A Calendar Built Around Summer
The schedule follows the town's seasons:
- Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2026: the target start
- Through the beginning of May 2027: winter construction
- Summer 2027: crews off during the busiest months
- After Columbus Day 2027: crews return to finish the first two phases over the winter
- Late 2028 into 2029: the third and final phase
In practice, the Fourth of July crowd at Mill Falls will barely notice. Residents who walk downtown in January will see two winters of work at the falls and in the Marketplace lot before the last phase moves across Main Street.
A legal notice in the Union Leader set a mandatory site walk for September 24 and a bid deadline of 2:00 p.m. on October 15, 2026. According to the town's report in the Select Board's October 26 packet, six firms came to the walk-through. No contractor has been publicly named yet, so the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas start is still a target, not a confirmed date.
The First Sign Won't Be Downtown
The first staging for the project is set for Jenness Hill Road. The Laconia Daily Sun reported that the Select Board approved storing the new penstock pipe at the old landfill, 11 and 17 Jenness Hill Road. The project needs more than 60 sections, shipped from Texas on a 20-week lead time. Town Manager Judie Milner said the pieces are so big that only three fit on a tractor-trailer. Public Works Director Craig Hale said the site is for storage only, not construction, and that delivery trucks will use the highway garage gates so transfer station traffic isn't affected.
Lake Waukewan has already felt the project. The state asked for a 6-inch drawdown to take pressure off the old system. The lake went down 9 inches while the team installed two new control channels at the old gatehouse, and it was then set to hold at 6 inches until rain refilled it. When a resident asked whether the lower level would continue into next summer, Lavigne said the state's 6-inch requirement is temporary and does not have to be kept for the whole construction period.
What the Falls Should Look Like After
At the July meeting, a resident asked whether the stonework would survive. Lavigne answered that all the engineering is underground and that the project will be judged by how it looks from the outside. He told the Laconia Daily Sun:
"The goal is to make it look like it is today, or better."
A landscape architect is working on the appearance of the flume. The waterfall stones will be reset and pinned with dowels. The patio at Giuseppe's will get bigger. The surge tank will be paved over in the Marketplace lot, with a new one across from it.
The start window opens the same week Meredith lights its holiday tree. The Meredith Area Chamber's Festival of Trees kicks off Saturday, November 28, at Community Park on Main Street, with a chili cook-off and the tree lighting at 5:30 p.m.
At Mulligan Property Group, we watch projects like the Waukewan dam closely because water levels, shoreline conditions and downtown access all matter to people who own near this lake. If you have questions about what the rebuild could mean for a Waukewan or downtown Meredith property, schedule a private consultation with Ellen or Jill.
