Rock Row (née The Ridge, née Dirigo Plaza) | Westbrook, ME

“At Rock Row, construction is resuming after a brief financing delay for the world-class medical facility and parking garage featuring New England Cancer Center, Rayus Imaging, the Dempsey Center, with more to be announced soon. We anticipate construction of residential units and more commercial projects at Rock Row to begin in 2024. We continue to celebrate many new small businesses in the city and looking forward to welcoming many more in the works for 2024.”
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Quote from the Westbrook mayor on mainebiz.
 
Seems that there are some new renderings for the office building (100 Rock Row) ....The building has been redesigned and shorted from 6 to 3 stories (2 if you don't count the first floor which is predominantly retail)

The new design is (in my opinion) a horrible and uninspired downgrade. this doesn't scream "innovative mass-timber design"

2 stories of squat, beige offices above a Pottery Barn...and yet Rock Row stills brands themselves as "Maine's Innovation district" :rolleyes:

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For those interested, these renderings and more can be found in the leasing listing at boulos.com. So far as the floor count goes, I chalk it up to soft demand for new office space. I am just glad that their current marketing materials still contain the bits that interest me the most: the cinema and the fancy-ass Italian restaurant.
Incidentally, that VR stuff I linked to last summer showed Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma as two planned tenants. I wonder if PB will be closing their Mall location and consolidating here.
 
I'm pretty surprised they're trying to sell offices surrounded by a dead zone of parking lots, instead of trying to start with housing - which there's actually demand for - and making an attempt to turn it into a neighborhood where people might actually want to work.

There's very weak demand for offices everywhere right now, because it's so hard for companies to entice their workers back into cubicles. That's going to be an especially big challenge if the office is in the back of a Market Basket next to the Maine Turnpike, the region's most noxious source of air pollution.
 
cneal said:
I'm pretty surprised they're trying to sell offices surrounded by a dead zone of parking lots, instead of trying to start with housing - which there's actually demand for - and making an attempt to turn it into a neighborhood where people might actually want to work.

There's very weak demand for offices everywhere right now, because it's so hard for companies to entice their workers back into cubicles. That's going to be an especially big challenge if the office is in the back of a Market Basket next to the Maine Turnpike, the region's most noxious source of air pollution.
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I think we're actually starting to see an increase in demand for office space. Most companies have adopted a hybrid schedule and only about 15-20% of the workforce is able to be fully remote. The downtown office vacancy rate is back down to where it was circa 2018. It's also interesting that there's been an outflow from downtown to more suburban locations. Berry Dunn moved out to part of the old UNUM campus and CIEE moved from their flagship location on Commercial St. to a site by the Maine Mall.

Having a mix of office, residential, hotel and retail at Rock Row would make the area a great live/work destination but so far it seems that almost none of that is panning out.
 
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Cosakita18 said:
I think we're actually starting to see an increase in demand for office space. Most companies have adopted a hybrid schedule and only about 15-20% of the workforce is able to be fully remote. The downtown office vacancy rate is back down to where it was circa 2018. It's also interesting that there's been an outflow from downtown to more suburban locations. Berry Dunn moved out to part of the old UNUM campus and CIEE moved from their flagship location on Commercial St. to a site by the Maine Mall.

Having a mix of office, residential, hotel and retail at Rock Row would make the area a great live/work destination but so far it seems that almost none of that is panning out.
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I agree it's slowly recovering compared to 2 years ago, but even a 15-20% rate of remote work - which is likely to be permanent at this point - represents a major shift in how much office space people need. Portland's Class A inventory is about 2 million square feet of office space; 15 percent of that is 300K SF, which is roughly equivalent to 1.5 One City Centers.

The examples you cite are examples of companies shopping for cheaper rents in older suburban office parks, where rents are lower because there's lower demand to work in those more isolated locations. But new construction, as Rock Row is proposing, requires higher rents. Rock Row basically offers the worst of both worlds: downtown rents, but without any of the downtown amenities (at least for the foreseeable future).
 
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