Hobson's Landing | Aloft Hotel | 383 Commercial Street | Portland

Phase 3 is also the most impressive looking building of the Hobson's Landing cluster in my opinion and will be an excellent visual anchor to the west end of Commercial Street. Had my doubts whether this phase would ever materialize but the Portland housing market is booming and hopefully it will continue.
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Agreed, it's a great "bookend" to the end of Commercial St. proper. Once this is done, the smalls lots in front of MEMIC and next to Bills Pizza will be the only gaps in the unified Commercial St. frontage running all the way from High St. to Franklin.

I'm not surprised this is moving ahead either. Demand for housing of all types is HOT right now, and the sudden explosion of WFH has freed up the lifestyle options for thousands of folks who can now keep your big-city salary while living in a place with a higher quality of life and overall lower cost of living. That's an attractive proposition for anyone from Boston / NYC / Washington.
 
The American Planning Association named Commercial Street as on of the top 10 downtown streets in the US back in 2008. They need to make another visit and check out the many improvements during the past 12 years including Thames Street which I basically consider an extension of Commercial.
 
What I find a bit puzzling about building this development in stages is that you're going to have people who have just moved into their very expensive new condos who will now have to endure 18-20 months of loud construction right outside their windows. I know there are economic reasons for building it in stages, but it would be very unappealing for me as a prospective buyer of the Phase II condos to know that I'll have to endure the construction of Phase III.
 
Great pictures Corey. I know that it's cost prohibitive for developers but that last photo really indicates the need for a glass building in Portland. Maybe we will see one in the next decade.
 
Maybe not totally relevant but I never noticed that the top 2 floors of the Holiday Inn seem a bit shorter than the others. Is that just a visual trick?
 
Article in the paper today about Reger Dasco Properties moving forward with phase 3 of this development. No new renderings but presumably it will look like the building in post #41 of this thread from @Portlander. It's a good looking building and will be a nice addition to Commercial. I do wish the existing structure at the corner of High and Commercial was being incorporated into the project. Photos suggest it's been there since at least the 1920's but, more than that, it's a pleasant structure that would accentuate the scale of the new buildings. To compensate for any lost square footage in the new structure, the City could have allowed the developer to build an extra two or three stories.

Several years ago, I lived across the street from the charming Ladd Carriage House at Columbia and Broadway in the other Portland. Prior to building the condo tower in the background of the screenshot below, they lifted the carriage house up, placed it on a truck, and relocated it during construction. I consider this historic pres done well. It doesn't dictate the "character" of new structures, it simply preserves a great building while allowing continued evolution of the city. Historic pres done poorly is allowing the constraints of capital or tastes from a previous era to dictate the scale or aesthetics of contemporary projects.

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Have they been using the existing structure as a construction office? Is that why it still exists?

Also, I have to say, this building looks much better in person and white is growing on me.
 
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