Portland Square Redevelopment | Portland

The top three floors have been under contract for a while now. Office space is a difficult sell currently and when you add a pandemic, construction costs and now a war to the process it may take a little longer to get this project moving forward. With the time, effort and costs that the developer has incurred I am optimistic it will eventually happen and I really like the quality design and building footprint along Spring Street.
 
It does at least show the top three floors are under contract?
As far as I can tell, that's also been removed as well in the latest update. Perhaps the original tenant didn't want to wait given the delay in construction.

But the fact that the listing still exists and is being updated is a good sign, I suppose.
 
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The 5th slide still shows the top three floors under contract.
 
I love this office building design. It's too bad this project can't expand with a hotel (not a blah chain) and skybridge to CIA. The hotel could have convention space and thus connect to CIA, and that would be the ceaselessly talked about "convention center" that Portland wants. Boston's convention center scene in the Seaport is thriving, and there is no reason one in downtown Portland with its easy access to the waterfront can't. People from all over the world want to come to Portland and the Maine coast for at least half the year. (The midwestern cities and their convention spaces are dying.) And to those who decry the shortfalls of CIA, I offer a simple solution, though probably a half-million to spend for the fix. Lighting. CIA has the worst and most unflattering lighting of any large public venue, or one that I've seen. New lighting can offer so many different variations, including narrow, wide, or soft beams, colors for mood, slow pulsing, etc. Lighting is key. Ask anyone behind or in front of a camera in Hollywood. As it is now, everyone looks ghastly under these lights. Also, the inside roof and beams need to be painted black, the way most venues do, to not cause the eye to wander up (the white reflects). The inside roof should not be the focus at an event--the event below should be. These are basics, and the CIA does not also fail because of its reduced capacity. 6,000 seats is enough to have a good time. Try sitting in the lower deck of the Superdome in New Orleans, in the back row behind the end zone. I did once, and did not have a good time.
 
The commercial leasing brochure for 3 Portland Square has recently been updated (Loopnet says the listing was updated last week)
As far as I can tell the original construction and occupancy timeline has been removed from the brochure.

Has anyone heard anything about the status of this project? For a relatively large downtown development, it never received much publicity or attention.
It looks like it was updated again... the page now says

This listing is not currently being advertised on LoopNet.com

Does anyone have the brochure downloaded that they could share with me?
 
The Cross Insurance Arena has approximately 6200 fixed seats not counting the luxury boxes. Basketball capacity is 7000 and concert capacity can reach up to 8200 depending on the stage set up. Numbers are down around 500 seats due to the necessity to meet ADA requirements during the renovations.
 
It certainly appears they're making a renewed effort to generate interest in this office building. I know the developer (North River) is primarily engaged in commercial development, but given the housing shortage I'm surprised they haven't considered a massive residential or at least mixed-use development on these sites.
 
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This appeared almost overnight, maybe it is the beginning of something positive?
 
I noticed this activity on Friday. Unfortunately, this seems unrelated to the 3 Portland Square project. It looks like they're just doing some roofing work on the 1 Portland Square building.
 
Indeed it was being used to lift some things up to the roof of One Portland Square earlier this week.
 
The dream isn't dead...the commercial listing for Three Portland Square was updated again last week. The "Year Built" has changed to 2023.


Office vacancy rates downtown are -slowly- falling again as companies have solidified their in-office / hybrid work plans.. The planned building is already partially under contract...I'd be willing to bet that if they begin construction they'll find another office tenant for some or all of the remaining space.
 
The amount of real estate this scheme wastes on a parking garage makes me very skeptical about it ever happening. They've got about 1/3rd of their site locked up under a parking garage that's almost definitely going to lose money, and their office tenants are going to have to pay higher rents to make up the difference.

Downtown garages are even less necessary in a hybrid work environment. If your workforce is working from home a few days a week, and a signficant portion are either walking or taking transit on the days they do come to the office, you can have 20-30 employees sharing 10 parking spaces.

And the opportunity costs of what else could be built there are huge - you could easily fit 400+ apartments on that garage footprint (and unlike a parking garage, people actually want to pay to rent housing).

This scheme is a pre-pandemic business model through and through – nobody wants to be in a suburban office park, but baby boomer developers still insist on trying to build suburban office parks downtown. The old men who are still investing in this kind of scheme are a dying breed (literally).
 
How about Roux take the majority of space for an incubator instead of the commercial space at the Bean Plant
 
The garage serves 1,2,3,and 4 Portland sq. There is no extra parking available for the tenants in One Portland Sq, which use Temple and the top of the old port.
 
The amount of real estate this scheme wastes on a parking garage makes me very skeptical about it ever happening. They've got about 1/3rd of their site locked up under a parking garage that's almost definitely going to lose money, and their office tenants are going to have to pay higher rents to make up the difference.

Downtown garages are even less necessary in a hybrid work environment. If your workforce is working from home a few days a week, and a signficant portion are either walking or taking transit on the days they do come to the office, you can have 20-30 employees sharing 10 parking spaces.

And the opportunity costs of what else could be built there are huge - you could easily fit 400+ apartments on that garage footprint (and unlike a parking garage, people actually want to pay to rent housing).

This scheme is a pre-pandemic business model through and through – nobody wants to be in a suburban office park, but baby boomer developers still insist on trying to build suburban office parks downtown. The old men who are still investing in this kind of scheme are a dying breed (literally).
Agreed. If they want to keep some parking, fine, but at least hide it on Cotton and put 10+ stories of apartments above it.
 
The amount of real estate this scheme wastes on a parking garage makes me very skeptical about it ever happening. They've got about 1/3rd of their site locked up under a parking garage that's almost definitely going to lose money, and their office tenants are going to have to pay higher rents to make up the difference.

Downtown garages are even less necessary in a hybrid work environment. If your workforce is working from home a few days a week, and a signficant portion are either walking or taking transit on the days they do come to the office, you can have 20-30 employees sharing 10 parking spaces.

And the opportunity costs of what else could be built there are huge - you could easily fit 400+ apartments on that garage footprint (and unlike a parking garage, people actually want to pay to rent housing).

This scheme is a pre-pandemic business model through and through – nobody wants to be in a suburban office park, but baby boomer developers still insist on trying to build suburban office parks downtown. The old men who are still investing in this kind of scheme are a dying breed (literally).

At the VERY least, I wish they would cap the garage with 6-10 stories of residential...There's absolutely a lot of wasted potential there.

I think the mindset of the developers is that on-site parking is necessary for attracting office tenants. Agree that it's very much a generational disconnect about what makes a workplace attractive.

At some point last year there was an article in the PPH about BerryDunn moving from downtown out the the former Unum building by the Jetport. They cited parking as a major reason for that move (whether that's a valid concern or not is debatable)
 
Agreed. If they want to keep some parking, fine, but at least hide it on Cotton and put 10+ stories of apartments above it.
If the garage were just wrapped with more useable human space (apartments/offices/something) along Cotton Street, to hide a smaller behemoth of a garage it would help reduce the impact and the number of most-likely-wasted parking spaces. They’ve got that on the plan for the Fore Street side — they just need to carry that wrapper around to better balance the proposal.
 
Given all that has transpired since the developers presented their Master Development Plan in 2019, I'm a bit surprised they haven't gone back to the drawing board and reconsidered the highest and best (and most profitable) uses of this property. Considering the likelihood that we'll never have the same demand for office space as pre-pandemic, why not lean more into residential? The developer (North River) has plenty of residential and mixed-used properties in their portfolio, so it's not out of their wheelhouse. There's so much potential at this site for residential, commercial or other more creative uses.
 

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