Canal Plaza Renovations & New Mixed-Use Tower | Portland

Hi all!

This is Jacob from East Brown Cow. I've admittedly been a long-time lurker on this forum and have always appreciated the thoughtful and varied dialogue that you guys have about many of the major projects going on around Portland.

With that in mind, I want to invite all of you to the launch of Old Port Square, our comprehensive vision for a 4-acre district within the Old Port, on May 6. This event will kick off our public process. I look forward to being able to share and discuss many more details with you on this forum in the coming months.

Details for the event are available at this link and at OldPortSquare.com. I hope to see you there!
 
We have Redfern -and- East Brown Cow as forum members!?! We might start to have more influence on Portland's urban design than the Planning Board :p

But really, this is incredibly exciting and has the potential to totally reshape this part of the city.

Hopefully this also involves adding a few stories to the top of Canal Plaza 😉😉
 
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I just want to thank East Brown Cow for looking to this forum and inviting us!!! it's an honor to looked upon and we come from all kinds of backgrounds that care about Portland. Suggestion, I would like to see a pizza or a wine and cheese take out to replace the available retail space just like the building in wells!!! its perfectly shaped... or how about Voodoo Donuts!!!!
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PWMFlyer said:
I just want to thank East Brown Cow for looking to this forum and inviting us!!! it's an honor to looked upon and we come from all kinds of backgrounds that care about Portland. Suggestion, I would like to see a pizza or a wine and cheese take out to replace the available retail space just like the building in wells!!! its perfectly shaped... or how about Voodoo Donuts!!!!View attachment 62321View attachment 62313
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The rebirth of HiFi donuts would be better. KEEP. IT. LOCAL.
 
I am guessing that the launch may be the rebranding of "Canal Plaza" to "Old Port Square" while allowing the 4 separate buildings to maintain their 1,2,3, and 4 Canal Plaza addresses to alleviate USPS concerns and change costs involved with tenants. Will probably include some of the entrance and exterior changes that have been underway and hopefully the redesign of the three mechanical roof caps that were shown in some previous illustrations. And lastly, some updated renderings and a possible model of the potential tower that could be gaining some traction after all of these years especially seeing that Mr Safdie will be attending the event. In my opinion SIGNIFICANT NEW CONSTRUCTION AND REDEVELOPMENT are the key words in the invitation. Didn't Tim Soley want to add a glass enclosed floor to the top of One Canal a few years ago which may have featured a restaurant? With my luck I may be wrong on all of the above due to retirement and not being connected to some of movers and shakers in Portland as I once was. :)
 
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How much presence does Key Bank even have in the complex these days, especially since they got rid of the lobby branch? (This also reminds me that the plaza has been the Maine HQ of Key Bank for decades longer than it was the Canal Bank home office.)
 
Good point Mark but I think the "Canal Plaza" name was kept for nostalgic purposes and it would be difficult for locals to refer to it by anything else since 1972. I think "Old Port Square" will be the new moniker and even old timers like us will eventually adjust. Maybe there will be a plaque or maker in the square as a tribute to the history of how Canal Bank actually got its name.
 
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Portlander said:
I am guessing that the launch may be the rebranding of "Canal Plaza" to "Old Port Square" while allowing the 4 separate buildings to maintain their 1,2,3, and 4 Canal Plaza addresses to alleviate USPS concerns and change costs involved with tenants. Will probably include some of the entrance and exterior changes that have been underway and hopefully the redesign of the three mechanical roof caps that were shown in some previous illustrations. And lastly, some updated renderings and a possible model of the potential tower that could be gaining some traction after all of these years especially seeing that Mr Safdie will be attending the event. In my opinion SIGNIFICANT NEW CONSTRUCTION AND REDEVELOPMENT are the key words in the invitation. Didn't Tim Soley want to add a glass enclosed floor to the top of One Canal a few years ago which may have featured a restaurant? With my luck I may be wrong on all of the above due to retirement and not being connected to some of movers and shakers in Portland as I once was. :)
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Where did you hear that the patriarch owner of the firm would be attending? If so, it's a notable gesture. Safdie is a TOP international arch firm with offices in Somerville (Boston), Singapore, Shanghai, Jerusalem, and Toronto. He's coming to Portland? The plan was originally to gut many of the old buildings to create a kind of connective sprawling interior retail space. And a tower would be sweet. Portland's economic and housing outlook looks good, despite the reality of this summer's tourist business taking a small hit (hotels and other lodging a bit down in rates due to lower demand this summer). I think the confidence is mostly present for Portland, close to Boston, Roux on the way, and relatively crime free when compared to most American cities. All cities have their aimless drug addicts, and the NY Times did do that hit job on Portland last week (kind of unfair), but Portland doesn't have that legacy ghetto (sorry if I've offended with truth) that nearly all U.S. cities have. Florida and Texas has a single-family home and condo glut and prices will fall, but not so much for Portland. The condo thing down there is going out of style, a bit. And townhomes are in, or for Portland. I was in Tampa a few weeks ago, nice city, but the downtown is a yawner. And we can almost say that we (Southern Maine) have a more desirable climate. Texas is ahead of schedule in heat so far, April looking like May, and Florida will be seeing the same. June through September inside is no way to live.
 
The square area in front of Key Bank has alot of potential as with movie night, lighten up the area, make it festive, do what they do in the seaport district, beer garden, corn hole, etc.. bring the people in...
 
Since we have two weeks to speculate, here are some observations:
  1. The whole Canal Plaza parcel is literally right next to Exchange Street and the middle of the Old Port on Exchange and Fore, but it certainly doesn't feel that way – it's cut off from all the foot traffic by a huge parking garage (to the south) and a big surface parking lot, and a dead plaza fronting Middle Street to the north. Parking is a notoriously low-rent land use but it's probably a loss-leader here that subsidizes all their office tenants.
  2. According to the latest annual Boulos Co. office outlook, the three Canal Plaza buildings are (basically) fully occupied, which surprised me. But the demand for offices is not strong these days, and these 1970s-era buildings are among the older Class A spaces on the market.
  3. East Brown Cow owns a lot of other Old Port mixed-use properties, including a lot of mixed-use historic buildings with ground-level retail and office above. Those properties would benefit from more foot traffic, and downtown residents and hotel guests spend a lot more on the local economy than commuter office workers.
So some predictions based on these premises:
  1. Most of the existing Canal Plaza office space will remain, but I predict some of the space will be renovated into new retail and apartments.
  2. The abandoned Key Bank drive-thru on Union Street takes up a massive amount of space and should be a prime development site.
  3. More speculative here, but hear me out: a partial demolition of the east side 3 Canal Plaza (along the party wall between the 1970s office building and the historic Canal Bank building) could open up a new access point into the center of the site from Middle Street, better integrating the parcel into the rest of the Old Port. They'd lose some square footage but this would also make the building a better fit for residences, which require smaller floorplates.
  4. This will reduce the landlords' need for on-site parking, allowing for redevelopment of the parking lot in the center of the site, and a partial or full demolition of the aging parking garage. Shrinking the garage's footprint would also improve access into the site from Fore Street – currently there's a driveway there, but it has a very unfriendly back-alley feel to it.
  5. Taking 2 and 3 together, there's an opportunity for East Brown Cow to re-create the historic "Plum Street" that used to be here, extending the Old Port with street that connects to Fore and runs parallel to Exchange, with lots of high-rent retail on newly-renovated ground floors of 1 and 3 Canal Plaza, plus the new Safdie hotel in the middle of the block. Demolishing the western half of the Fore Street garage would also make room for another new mid- or high-rise mixed-use residential building next to the Hyatt Place:

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