Most people see the waterfall beside Giuseppe's Pizzeria & Ristorante as scenery, a pretty spill of water behind Mill Falls Marketplace. It is actually the business end of a dam. The State of New Hampshire treats the whole system as one structure. It starts at Lake Waukewan, runs under Main Street, passes beneath a parking lot and drops down that stone face into Lake Winnipesaukee. In May 2021 the NHDES Dam Bureau issued the owner a letter of deficiency, and the Select Board minutes from July 27, 2026 show that the Lake Waukewan Dam is classified as high hazard.
The repair that follows is mostly out of sight. It will still show up in places you pass every week: the Marketplace lot, the patio at Giuseppe's, the sidewalk by Frog Rock Tavern. If all goes to plan, it will take most of three years.
A dam with no pond in front of it
The dam is owned by Hampshire Hospitality Holdings, which Procaccianti Companies bought in 2019. The Laconia Daily Sun reported a projected cost of $6 million to $8 million. A FEMA cost-sharing grant covers 65 percent and the owner pays the rest. The town administers the grant funds but has no obligation to pay toward the project.
Project engineer John Lavigne of the Turner Group told the Select Board that this dam doesn't look like the usual picture of a pond, an embankment and a spillway. "This is different," he said in the Daily Sun's account. "This is a channel that has been fed by the lake. Historically, the water was used for old hydropower in the mills, the millworks. All the components were designed and put around the fact of delivering power to the mill."
Over time, that power channel became the main outlet of Lake Waukewan. The lake's original outlet, which existed about a hundred years ago, has been filled in. The system can control only the top 5 or 6 feet of the lake, the depth of the channel at its intake. The state's design standards now require dams to pass more water than they used to, so the rebuilt channel has to carry more than the mill ever needed.
The level of the lake behind the Waukewan shore is set by plumbing that runs under a winery, a parking lot and a pizzeria patio.
From Frog Rock Tavern to Giuseppe's, stop by stop
The Turner Group walked the board through the whole route, from Waukewan to Winnipesaukee. Here it is in order, with the plan for each stop.
- The canal near Frog Rock Tavern and the pedestrian bridge. Water leaves the lake through a stone-walled channel that runs down toward the parking lot by High Street. Two iron trash racks went in there as a temporary fix, one at Frog Rock Tavern and one under the pedestrian bridge, because debris from the lake keeps plugging the pipe. Divers go in from time to time to clear it. The permanent plan is a concrete structure with better racks that are easier to maintain.
- The box culvert under Frog Rock Tavern. A 6-by-6-foot concrete culvert from the 1930s has always been underwater. Divers found it in good condition, so it stays.
- The penstock under 62 Main St. The water crosses Main Street and runs under Hermit Woods Winery & Eatery through a 6-foot pipe. Its joints fit snugly but aren't watertight, and Lavigne suspects they have leaked for years.
- The pipe under the Marketplace lot. Just before the lot, the pipe narrows from 6 feet to 4 feet. The 4-foot insert was put in to keep the old pipe from coming apart, and it is now corroding and collapsing. A new penstock will replace it, and Hermit Woods has granted an easement for the new piping. The old line stays in the ground and gets pumped full of "flowable fill," a liquid that hardens solid, so no one has to dig it up.
- The old gatehouse. This wooden gate once controlled how much lake water reached the mill. Inspectors found it completely rotted and removed it so the water could flow freely. The gatehouse building stays.
- The surge tank. It was built to absorb the rush of water if the mill shut down suddenly, and today it regulates Waukewan's level. The inner tank dates to the early 1900s and the outer shell to the 1930s. The tank is leaking and corroding. The plan is to cut the old tank down to the level of the lot, fill it, pave over it and build a new tank with a new control system on the opposite side of the lot.
- The stop logs. Wooden boards held in place by corroding steel stakes now set the flow, and water runs underneath them. They will give way to a drop-gate, so the water passes over the top and the lake is controlled from the surface.
- The flume. The masonry walls on either side are in good shape.
- The waterfall. The falls are made of embedded stones covered with concrete. The channel bottom has eroded, and water can get underneath and into the restaurant. Crews will reline the channel and reset the stones on the right-hand side, pinning them with dowels. They will also build a second wall behind the stones under Giuseppe's patio. According to the minutes, another masonry wall will enlarge that patio, and the area below it will be terraced.
Of the nine stops, two stay as they are, the culvert and the flume. Most of the rest gets replaced, filled or rebuilt.
Why a mill race ended up running the lake
The Meredith Historical Society's walking tour traces milling on the Waukewan stream back to 1787, when small saw, grist and carding mills lined its banks. John Bond Swasey later improved the stream and the mill race. In 1833 the building that now holds Mill Falls Marketplace went up as a cotton mill. Over the years the mill yard turned out lumber, pianos, hosiery, linen and more. A Laconia Daily Sun profile credits Swasey with re-engineering the Waukewan outlet and creating the 40-foot waterfall to power the mills.
That is why the outlet sits in the middle of the village. The waterfall was built to turn machinery, and the lake's level came to depend on it.
The Mill Falls history page says three investors bought the old linen-mill property in 1983 and converted the mill into The Marketplace. Foster's Daily Democrat dates the Marketplace opening to May 1984 and the 54-room Inn at Mill Falls grand opening to July 4, 1985. The 1984 redevelopment kept the mill building and the waterfall.
The pieces now being retired are relics of the mill's power system: the gatehouse gate, the surge tank built for sudden mill shutdowns, the stop logs and the narrowed pipe.
What the schedule asks of downtown
The engineers said their main challenge isn't the construction itself. It is getting equipment in without tying up parking in the lower lot on Route 3, the Mill Falls lot and the municipal lot on High Street. That is the reason for the phased plan. As the Daily Sun described it, work happens in three phases, with the first two running at the same time.
| Window, as planned in July 2026 | Work | Where you would see it |
|---|---|---|
| Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2026, through early May 2027 | Waterfall, flume and embankment, plus the new penstock | Behind the Marketplace, at Giuseppe's, in the Mill Falls lot |
| Summer 2027 | Crews take the season off | No active work during the busiest months |
| After Columbus Day 2027, through winter | Phases one and two finish | Same areas as the first winter |
| Late 2028 into 2029 | New trash rack structure and culvert extension | Across Main Street near Frog Rock Tavern |
The minutes expect a couple of spaces in the Mill Falls lot to be lost for good, because the new surge tank takes up room the old one didn't. More spaces may be lost during the first two phases. The Main Street crossing is the only part that leaves private property, and it is scheduled for last.
The pipe won't pile up downtown while it waits. The Select Board agreed to let the project store its large pipe shipments, more than 60 pieces, at the old landfill and transfer station, according to a separate Daily Sun story.
At the July meeting, a resident asked whether the falls would still look as good afterward. Lavigne pointed out that the engineering is all underground. "The goal is to make it look like it is today, or better," he said, as quoted by the Laconia Daily Sun.
Where the start date stands
Because the project has federal funding, the contract has to go out to public bid. The latest update in the Select Board packet for October 26, 2026 is from the board's September 28 meeting. Six firms attended the mandatory bid walkthrough, and bids were due in about a month. That entry names no contractor, gives no confirmed start date and lists no closures for lots or sidewalks. The Thanksgiving-to-Christmas start is still the target set in July. The firm date depends on when a contract is awarded, and the engineers told the board they would come back with updates.
The first visible work, when it starts, will be at the bottom of the falls beside Giuseppe's.
Our downtown landmarks have a way of shaping what buyers ask about and what sellers ought to know, and this project will be part of village life until 2029. If you'd like to talk through what it means for your corner of Meredith, Meredith Connor is happy to walk Main Street with you and share what's changing. Let's Connect — Find Your Lake Life.
