General Portland Discussion

cneal said:
I don't think anyone's posted this here, but the city planning office has produced this very interesting dashboard of housing production data:

https://www.portlandmaine.gov/1462/Housing-Dashboard

Some things to note:
  • The 2020 "green new deal" ordinance did not, as some predicted, put an end to new housing development; 2023 was a record-setting year for housing approvals, and 2021 was the third-best year in recent history (I'd argue that the city's ongoing zoning reforms and increased state investments in affordable housing have cancelled out any added costs of the GND)
  • 2015 was the city's second-best year for new housing approvals, but 1/3rd of the 1225 units approved that year were in the Midtown project.
  • In most years, the median time between planning approval to completion is 2 years.
  • There are 2,260 housing units that have been approved since 2020 but are not yet built, including Portland Foreside, the Bayside/Port Properties project, the co-op projects on outer Washington and in LIbbytown, and the buildout of the Catherine McAuley senior housing
  • Average housing completions over the past 5 years has been around 320 units/year. That's a 1 percent growth rate for the city as a whole (which has 35,000 households). By comparison, the average annualized population growth for the entire Portland metro area for the decade between 2010 and 2020 was 0.7 percent/year.
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Hate to rain on the parade here but I saw a slideshow presented by City of all the "approved" projects suggesting there was no slow down to housing development and I thought wow - this would be a great to show the housing that didn't get built because of the Green New Deal since I know almost all of them are DOA and the only one on the slide that has any legs is a hotel with the magic number 9 condos. I think in order to truly understand if the GND did or did not negatively impact actual housing creation I would compare the number of approvals to the number of actual building permits issued and then another level which is home many Certificates of Occupancy were issued. That is the real data. ~ C
 
There seems to be a large discrepancy between what gets -approved- and what gets built and as @Redfern pointed out a lot of previously approved projects are either stalled or dead.

There's very little actually breaking ground or underway right now. The biggest project underway at the moment is the first phase of Dougherty Field.
 
Actually now going through the dashboard. They have 52 Hanover, The Casco and Mercy showing up in the 2021 "Approval" which people might assume is after GND but all 3 of these projects (599 Units of Housing) were approved pre GND. ~ C
Housing Dashboard.png
 
Redfern said:
Actually now going through the dashboard. They have 52 Hanover, The Casco and Mercy showing up in the 2021 "Approval" which people might assume is after GND but all 3 of these projects (599 Units of Housing) were approved pre GND. ~ CView attachment 51050
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Where is this dashboard?
 
IMG_5927.jpeg

One Portland Square might be going a little overboard with the exterior signage but if it keeps these companies located downtown so be it.
 
Portlander said:
One Portland Square might be going a little overboard with the exterior signage but if it keeps these companies located downtown so be it.
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I agree about keeping them downtown, but that business card for Verrill is the most out-of-place, ugly-ass POS since they put a sign obscuring the cornice of the Commerce Building. It might even surpass that because it's just so lame. And I am saying that as someone who doesn't have a general objection to commercial signage!
 
Portlander said:
Is it just me or does it appear to be a little crooked?
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That's... probably not the best thing to say about a law firm :LOL: . But, my hunch it's an illusion stemming from the parallel lines on the building and the sign itself not being flush. A photo from the top of the Garage, or better yet an upper floor of a Canal Plaza building (not that I assume you have access to every tower in Portland) might help... straighten it out.
 
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