Old Port Square (née Canal Plaza) | Portland

Large reddit post about the new proposal.
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1kh87q5/new_30_story_tower_proposed_for_portland_maine

One of the posters added this little creation.

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Not able to read the article due to lack of a subscription so I'll refrain from making any negative comments.
 
It's pedantic and overly dramatic, and in places contradictory. Nothing much here. It's just to get more eyeballs for the paper (ads). But I'd fix or tweak the top of this proposal build. One of the worst architectural moments for the city is coming up soon--perhaps next year. It's the PMA addition with the large "hole in the facade," thus defacing a marvelous design by I.M. Pei's Henry Cobb. It completely ruins the integrity of it, the balance and assimilation into the surrounding buildings. Oh well. C'est la vie.
 
The author is a teacher of Art History at MECA and USM. Honestly, the piece basically says "tall building full of rich people bad!"
 
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I don’t want to spam this picture in the forum too much, this will be the last time, I promise. BUT these people need to realize you have to start somewhere and, like it or not, this skyline will continue to change due to the demand for housing and the demand for Portland in general! When this is built in 4 years it will stick out. In 10 years from now, this will fit right into our skyline.
Never heard of someone’s day being ruined due to a building being taller than other ones.
 
NR2Portland said:
View attachment 63195
I don’t want to spam this picture in the forum too much, this will be the last time, I promise. BUT these people need to realize you have to start somewhere and, like it or not, this skyline will continue to change due to the demand for housing and the demand for Portland in general! When this is built in 4 years it will stick out. In 10 years from now, this will fit right into our skyline.
Never heard of someone’s day being ruined due to a building being taller than other ones.
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Challenge is that this argument, while very valid, falls on deaf ears for a lot of people around here (not in this forum, just in general). They don't want height at all. None. Period. To them, the stubby buildings are part of the "character" of Portland, part of it's "charm." They fear Portland turning into a smaller version of Boston, even though it's a technical impossibility. Ultimately, its a fear of change that drives the NIMBY movement in Portland, and the only way to combat the fear of change is to sometimes rip off the bandaid despite their contentions that it's going to be the most painful thing they've ever experienced in their lives.
 
These same people call Portland "quaint" which I don't get. Sure, maybe the islands are quaint, but to me, mainland Portland is not. The character of the city has already changed in the last 5-10 years, tall building or no tall building. And it's going to keep evolving, tall building or no tall building.
 
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I don't really think that height is the problem here. Remember that Redfern's project on Federal Street sailed through its planning approvals with virtually no opposition.

This project is taller, sure, but it's also clearly being marketed to much wealthier homebuyers and tourists.

Remember that Redfern's project was from the get-go designed to provide mid-market rental apartments. I haven't read anything about the prices these developers are targeting, but in the absence of any info to the contrary, everyone's assuming (and it's probably a safe assumption) that it's going to very expensive condos, marketed to the kinds of people who can pay millions of dollars for real estate that they only spend a few weeks a year (if that) living in.

And the kinds of people who can afford that kind of real estate aren't exactly assets to the city. Frankly, a lot of them are raging douchebags who are too narcissistic to realize how awful they are.

As much as it's a cool piece of architecture, I would not want to live near this building and its transient residents. Portland's service workers – who are an important voting constituency – are not exactly eager to serve more psychotically wealthy people. Better to let them segregate themselves in tick-infested suburbs like Cape Elizabeth and Cumberland.
 
cneal said:
I don't really think that height is the problem here. Remember that Redfern's project on Federal Street sailed through its planning approvals with virtually no opposition.
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It's primarily because they did not release any jarring images of a tall building. If you remember, early on and for a while after, it was only images from the ground looking up in a kind of wide angle, so that the top looked like it was fading away. That was kind of brilliant and sneaky of them ((y)). And no one demanded anything different. What was this local developer thinking? They should know better.
 
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cneal said:
I don't really think that height is the problem here. Remember that Redfern's project on Federal Street sailed through its planning approvals with virtually no opposition.

This project is taller, sure, but it's also clearly being marketed to much wealthier homebuyers and tourists.

Remember that Redfern's project was from the get-go designed to provide mid-market rental apartments. I haven't read anything about the prices these developers are targeting, but in the absence of any info to the contrary, everyone's assuming (and it's probably a safe assumption) that it's going to very expensive condos, marketed to the kinds of people who can pay millions of dollars for real estate that they only spend a few weeks a year (if that) living in.

And the kinds of people who can afford that kind of real estate aren't exactly assets to the city. Frankly, a lot of them are raging douchebags who are too narcissistic to realize how awful they are.

As much as it's a cool piece of architecture, I would not want to live near this building and its transient residents. Portland's service workers – who are an important voting constituency – are not exactly eager to serve more psychotically wealthy people. Better to let them segregate themselves in tick-infested suburbs like Cape Elizabeth and Cumberland.
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Haven't been to archboston in a while
This has to be satire
 
Oneup said:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/05...osal-to-build-maines-tallest-building-letter/

So funny to have this pretty much read out “You guys should stop developing your city so I can fulfill my fantasies on my summer vacay”
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Exactly. One huge issue with the Portland economy having transitioned so much to food tourism, etc. is that we become dependent on people with higher incomes from elsewhere to keep everything going. Plus, the "keep Portland and Maine quaint for those of us from away who want to use it to escape our urban environments" cancer has been embedding itself into our public discourse for years.
 
Oneup said:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/05...osal-to-build-maines-tallest-building-letter/

So funny to have this pretty much read out “You guys should stop developing your city so I can fulfill my fantasies on my summer vacay”
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That is one unenlightened opinion piece. Thanks for sharing. My favorite European city, Basel, Switzerland, has a metro area population with around 10,000 more people than Portland (567,000). It has 41 hi-rises higher than 250 feet (around 25 stories). So that's 41 more than Portland's tallest, The Casco. I challenge anyone to go there and not come back thinking it's a utopia, the safest city in the world, and the friendliest people. A perfect city. Maybe if they had no hi-rises they would be even nicer? Remember, the residents make a city great, not its architecture. Good arch is great and can improve the human experience, but it's not a key reason why a society thrives in such a positive manner. But then Basel has a lot of cool modern architecture. And those roads... It's why so many F1 drivers choose to live there. They can practice at almost any time, even while going out to get groceries. Travel the world and it will help you see the truth.
 
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TC_zoid said:
That is one unenlightened opinion piece. Thanks for sharing. My favorite European city, Basel, Switzerland, has a metro area population with around 10,000 more people than Portland (567,000). It has 41 hi-rises higher than 250 feet (around 25 stories). So that's 41 more than Portland's tallest, The Casco. I challenge anyone to go there and not come back thinking it's a utopia, the safest city in the world, and the friendliest people. A perfect city. Maybe if they had no hi-rises they would be even nicer? Remember, the residents make a city great, not its architecture. Good arch is great and can improve the human experience, but it's not a key reason why a society thrives in such a positive manner. But then Basel has a lot of cool modern architecture. And those roads... It's why so many F1 drivers choose to live there. They can practice at almost any time, even while going out to get groceries. Travel the world and it will help you see the truth.
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You sure thats Basel with 41? Wikipedia list is showing 41 in all of Switzerland above 250 ft.
 
22marc said:
You sure thats Basel with 41? Wikipedia list is showing 41 in all of Switzerland above 250 ft.
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There are not anywhere near 41 buildings over 250 feet in Basel. But it is fair to point out that it has surprising amount of tall buildings for such a small city.

Basel's a nice city and one that I've enjoyed visiting on several occasions. I don't think it has a ton in common with Portland at all though. It looks and feels significantly larger on the ground - mostly because it is in every conceivable way. There are 175k people living in Basel's 9 square miles. It has a much higher population in/around the core, a much higher population density, a much larger volume of office space and office workers, a ton of college and graduate students, and several major railway stations with frequent international and regional departures. In terms of metro areas, the U.S. has different criteria for quantifying metro areas. Greater Portland covers more than 2x the land area of the Basel region and still has a lower population. They're both great places in their own rights, but they're not in the same tier in terms of size.

If I were to point out the things about Basel that make it great, the high rises wouldn't be too high on my list. I doubt most visitors are paying much attention to the towers unless they have business in one of them. Though I would say that the city is one of many examples in Europe highlighting that having tall buildings doesn't ruin the place or destroy the historic character.
 
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Lrfox said:
There are not anywhere near 41 buildings over 250 feet in Basel. But it is fair to point out that it has surprising amount of tall buildings for such a small city.

Basel's a nice city and one that I've enjoyed visiting on several occasions. I don't think it has a ton in common with Portland at all though. It looks and feels significantly larger on the ground - mostly because it is in every conceivable way. There are 175k people living in Basel's 9 square miles. It has a much higher population in/around the core, a much higher population density, a much larger volume of office space and office workers, a ton of college and graduate students, and several major railway stations with frequent international and regional departures. In terms of metro areas, the U.S. has different criteria for quantifying metro areas. Greater Portland covers more than 2x the land area of the Basel region and still has a lower population. They're both great places in their own rights, but they're not in the same tier in terms of size.

If I were to point out the things about Basel that make it great, the high rises wouldn't be too high on my list. I doubt most visitors are paying much attention to the towers unless they have business in one of them. Though I would say that the city is one of many examples in Europe highlighting that having tall buildings doesn't ruin the place or destroy the historic character.
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Sorry, my mistake, for all of Switzerland.
Here are Basel's tallest buildings... Still far more impressive than Portland, with equal metro area populations. Metroplitan area population is a more accurate indicator of a city's size, otherwise, El Paso, Texas is bigger than Boston, and MUCH bigger than Miami.
https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/city/basel
 
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Does anyone recall how tall the oil exploration derricks were that Cianbro built down on the eastern waterfront in the 90's, after BIW closed? Because those were easily visible over the Franklin St. gap. Not apples-to-apples, but at least it's a basis of comparison.
 
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