One of our senior arch members recently wrote this:
I was just at a luncheon with Roux, a lot is happening since starting up 23 months ago. Tech and bio companies are in talks to open offices here or move here. They are housing lots of students and teachers in hotels due to lack of availability. Lots of growth coming soon, stay tuned...
Housing students in hotels? Huh? All other U.S. cities focus on housing migrants and the homeless in theirs.
Roux made a mistake. Substantially more interest in the peninsula is creating an exciting dynamic for the future of Portland. Public and private partnerships such as the new graduate and professional center (with Roux), which is headed by a woman with a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and an MBA from Harvard, is no joke (Terry Sutton). The peninsula is where all the "fun" is. And I don't think the professional graduate center arm of the university is going back to the campus, on the other side of 295. But that's adjoining, so not too bad of a place to be. Suburban campuses can be a liability today. Gorham is on the wane. Today's students need access to transportation (they don't drive cars) and Boston is easily accessible from the peninsula for internships and jobs. Portland has an exciting combination of location, recreation, academic options, high-tech businesses, and entertainment. I believe that in 5 years (or maybe less) rents and home prices will double here (I pull metrics in creative ways for my work and project this). It's coming, a wave, and it's going to crash soon, but not destroy--change for the better. The 2030 Portland will be somewhat unrecognizable. Sure, Roux will more than likely build on its new acquistion off-peninsula and continue to fight with its neighbors over "institutional creep" and traffic, but it's still not too late to move--the land has gone up in value. Sometimes you make a mistake in business because the immediate future has changed the game. Big tech is gathering around M.I.T. I see the same thing happening for the East End. It's a hot triad of Roux and the law and business schools of UM/USM (the latter of which is adding more students due to demand). Another metric I study is the social media comments of the students. What they say is what they do. And that "do" is not one conducive to being on a remote campus. Where else can you live and study and in less than a ten-minute walk, be to school or work in one direction, and then the beach after (East End Beach) to use a kayak to paddle within the greatest sailing bay in the world (according to my Hawaiian born schooner captain last year). Hartford? New Haven? Providence? Manchester? Nope. The only thing keeping New Haven and Providence from sinking are its colleges. Education and tech IS the future, and it's shaping up now for Portland's new way of life. "The way life should be?" They should revise that to "The way life is going to be."
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