NEW EMPORIS BUILDING COUNTS for NNE

P

Patrick

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Check this out: Here are the links for the 4 largest cities in northern new england on emporis.com

it is interesting because at the top of each page it tells you the total building count for each city (low rises and high rises combined) and Portland comes out far ahead of every other city. I am wondering if it is because the other cities just dont have all of their buildings listed????? can someone tell me if there are buildings missing in these other cities or are there just way more buildings in portland than I thought.....?

also, manchester has been removed from the boston metro region on emporis.com, and its single city metro (sor itself standing separate from boston) is 400,000, whereas portlands is 622,000........can this be correct?????



portland
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/?id=101732

manchester
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/?id=102831

nashua
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/?id=102329

burlington
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/?id=102059
 
Well Portland sure does have an impressive collection of low-mid rise buildings, though I do get a kick out of a church being the tallest. I'm inclined to think several Manch ones were left out, b/c of the huge disparity, but I'm not familiar enough with the buildings to name many. I can say that the bldg my sister works in the Peterson Building, which is 7 stories, isn't listed, also no churches are listed or any of the millyard buildings - which I can't blame them for b/c there are so many it would be hard to differentiate them. I didn't see the new airport control tower, which sadly is the 4th tallest "building" in Manch. But I wouldn;t be surprised if even after all that Portland had more, Portland's collection is pretty impressive.

also, manchester has been removed from the boston metro region on emporis.com, and its single city metro (sor itself standing separate from boston) is 400,000, whereas portlands is 622,000........can this be correct?????

Well, it's a tricky issue. The thing is they consider a very large geographic area, essentially all of southern Maine, to be the Portland Metro area. This includes all of Cumberland, Androscoggin, and Sagadahoc Counties, virtually all of York County and chunks of Lincoln, Kennebec, and Oxford Counties. So that comes up to 620,000 but spread out over a 7-county area.

In Manchester's case, one county alone - Hillsborough County- is larger than the listed Manchester metro area. And at least half of Manchester's metro is in Merrimack and Rockingham Counties. The total pop. for these three counties is 850,000. But b/c Southern NH has more cities than Southern Maine, the area is usually broken up into 5 different metros - Manchester, Nashua, Concord, and Portsmouth -extreme Southern Rockingham County falls in the Boston metro.

So while Manchester has many more people living around it, Portland is considered the larger metro, b/c there's nothing else around it to compete with.
 
Smuttynose said:
Well Portland sure does have an impressive collection of low-mid rise buildings, though I do get a kick out of a church being the tallest. I'm inclined to think several Manch ones were left out, b/c of the huge disparity, but I'm not familiar enough with the buildings to name many. I can say that the bldg my sister works in the Peterson Building, which is 7 stories, isn't listed, also no churches are listed or any of the millyard buildings - which I can't blame them for b/c there are so many it would be hard to differentiate them. I didn't see the new airport control tower, which sadly is the 4th tallest "building" in Manch. But I wouldn;t be surprised if even after all that Portland had more, Portland's collection is pretty impressive.

also, manchester has been removed from the boston metro region on emporis.com, and its single city metro (sor itself standing separate from boston) is 400,000, whereas portlands is 622,000........can this be correct?????

Well, it's a tricky issue. The thing is they consider a very large geographic area, essentially all of southern Maine, to be the Portland Metro area. This includes all of Cumberland, Androscoggin, and Sagadahoc Counties, virtually all of York County and chunks of Lincoln, Kennebec, and Oxford Counties. So that comes up to 620,000 but spread out over a 7-county area.

In Manchester's case, one county alone - Hillsborough County- is larger than the listed Manchester metro area. And at least half of Manchester's metro is in Merrimack and Rockingham Counties. The total pop. for these three counties is 850,000. But b/c Southern NH has more cities than Southern Maine, the area is usually broken up into 5 different metros - Manchester, Nashua, Concord, and Portsmouth -extreme Southern Rockingham County falls in the Boston metro.

So while Manchester has many more people living around it, Portland is considered the larger metro, b/c there's nothing else around it to compete with.

First, yes, our tallest building is a church, but I need to stress that this is no ordinary church. It is a cathedral of massive proportions. The steeple reaches just over 20 stories into the air. Most churches are nowhere near that tall.

Second, I thought that might have been the case (not listing all of manchesters buildings) because from google earth the two cities look quite similar in terms of development, and i couldnt believe it if all of manchester was essentially houses (where would they all work?!?).

third, there are other cities in southern maine besides portland, and they do have their own metro regions. Biddeford-saco (39,000) has its own MSA and so does Lewiston-Auburn (65,000), but both of these MSAs were sucked into the Portland CMAS (combined metro statistical area) and I guess what I am confused about is why hasnt this happened in manchester too?????????

I would think that concord and nashua being so close to the city would be sucked into its metro. I would rather drive into manch than boston if i lived in nashua and concord is closer to manchester than lewiston is to portland (and concord is smaller than lewiston) so why are the surrounding cities not sucked in?
 
I would think that concord and nashua being so close to the city would be sucked into its metro. I would rather drive into manch than boston if i lived in nashua and concord is closer to manchester than lewiston is to portland (and concord is smaller than lewiston) so why are the surrounding cities not sucked in?

I couldn't tell ya. I don't know about this whole MSA, CMSA thing. It seems so subjective to me.
 
I was looking at the Portland buildings on Emporis and have a couple quick questions.

I noticed that a big chunk of buildings are about the same height, but make up a pretty big footprint. Was/is there a height limit?

A lot of the buildings are brick, which is kind of unusual for modern tall buildings. Does the city push this so the buildings blend in better? Would the city accept a conventional modern skyscraper, say a shorter John Hancock?

P.S. I love One Portland Square, especially considering it was built in 1987. It looks kinda art-deco-ish.
 
Smuttynose said:
I would think that concord and nashua being so close to the city would be sucked into its metro. I would rather drive into manch than boston if i lived in nashua and concord is closer to manchester than lewiston is to portland (and concord is smaller than lewiston) so why are the surrounding cities not sucked in?

I couldn't tell ya. I don't know about this whole MSA, CMSA thing. It seems so subjective to me.

the whole MSA versus CMSA thing can be broken down as follows:

MSA means the extent of population that primarily commutes into an urban core versus working primarily in their own town or city. when this urban core city spreads out like in boston to cambridge, or in portland to south portland, then the two cities become the core etc. and when the commute pattern starts to get blurry near another core, then the smaller core gets sucked into the larger core and they form a CMSA, especially when it is perceived that the smaller core prospers because of proximity to thelarger core (providence and boston, or manchestr and boston, or lewiston and portland, or biddeford and portland, and i would imagine nashua and concord for manchester). at least this is how it has been explained to me.
 
Smuttynose said:
I was looking at the Portland buildings on Emporis and have a couple quick questions.

I noticed that a big chunk of buildings are about the same height, but make up a pretty big footprint. Was/is there a height limit?

A lot of the buildings are brick, which is kind of unusual for modern tall buildings. Does the city push this so the buildings blend in better? Would the city accept a conventional modern skyscraper, say a shorter John Hancock?

P.S. I love One Portland Square, especially considering it was built in 1987. It looks kinda art-deco-ish.

1. Currently the city of Portland has a height limit of 250 feet along congress street, 230 feet in parts of bayside, and 150-165 for many other sections of the peninsula, falling off dramatically to as low as 35 feet as neighborhoods are approached. of the 250 feet, onl;y 210 feet can be a straight building, and the top 40 feet must be used for some sort of distinguishing architectural top piece, which slants in from the rest of the building, not necessarily a spire. it could be used for functional space so long as additional shadows are not created above and beyond what the 210 feet creates.

this is odd though, cause most of the land that falls in this range is already developed. so i dunno what ourt chance are.

but we could very easily see a 230 footer (190 feet plus 40 foot top piece) where lincoln center was proposed. that would be about 20 - 23 stories or so.

thos ebuildings you saw that are all about the same height, are they in the 8-11 story range? if so, then they are probably part of the 1980s boom, in which many buildings were developed on the peninsula, and my guess is that the chaneg was drastic enough without adding in a skyscraper. but it bugs me a lot to know that we have a downtown office building complex that consists of one 11 story building attached to a 10 story building, when they could have just built a 20-story building instead, with some sort of a park next to it......rrrrr.....

2. the city does push brick, but sometimes they push it in sneaky ways (by say denying non brick proposals and easily accepting, even praising, brick proposals). sometimes they specify that new buildings must blend in, and this means brick. other times developers just know what their chances are and dont risk proposing glass. but shorter buildings are beginning to set a precedent, like the new custom house square (all glass, 6 stories). no we would not build a john hancock, not in a million years. well, at least not downtown, but who knows for bayside. long way away anyways....but lincoln center was modeled after one international place in boston. says that on emporis anyway.

3. i am glad you like one portland square, it is for sure my favorite design in the city, even if not the tallest. love it.

right next to it they are considering, supposedly, building a three portland square of the same height.

4. another reason you see brick is that some of our taller buildings arent modern at all. at least three or four go back 50 years or more (time and temp, maine bank and trust, franklin towers, and i believe pierce atwood, too). the newer models are just trying to look like theyve been around forever.

p.s. despite the height limit of 250 feet we once had a 275 footer approved and ready for construction in the 1980s for the same site as lincoln center. it was called lincoln square and is listed as 15 stories on emporis.com. would have been a very tall 15 stories. i can find a pic if youd like.
 

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