One Marginal Way Project | Portland

[PWMFlyer]

New project by Northland.
Currently in its predevelopment phase, with a construction start of spring 2021, Northland is actively pursuing anchor tenants for One Marginal Way. Anchor tenants will drive the design aesthetic and interior layout.
One Marginal Way will be Bayside’s newest multi-use development project. This Class A office/residential tower will include on-site structured parking, street level retail, office space, modern apartments and a rooftop cafe. One Marginal Way will have easy access to downtown and I-295, onsite retailers and restaurants and direct access to Portland’s walking/biking trails. This project will total 130,000 square feet, and will easily become one of Portland, Maine’s most sought-after business addresses.

Commercial real estate in Portland, Maine — Northland

A commercial real estate developer in Portland, Maine has proposed a spectacular opportunity. One Marginal Way is in the Planning Phase. Anchor tenants are invited to participate in development design.

www.northlandus.com

 

[Cosakita18]

Wow! Great find. I haven't seen or heard anything about this. Definitely a perfect location for a tall building.

The amount of parking seems a bit excessive. I hope that the parking levels are hidden at least. The rendering they show just looks like six levels on top of a parking garage. Not great street engagement. Then again, this is the same company that developed that cheap looking strip mall immediately next to this proposal, so not exactly the most visionary of developers when it comes to multimodal accessibility and transit-oriented development

 

[cneal]

They're going to have a hard time making this financially feasible if 1/3rd of their building is dedicated to "free" parking that won't pay any rent (of course, it won't really be free – they're just signaling that the people renting the space up above are going to be forced to pay higher rents, regardless of whether or not they need a parking spot).

You look at all the failed/stalled proposals from recent years – 221 Congress, 161 York, arguably even Federated's project – they all tried to cram way too much parking on their sites, and parking garage rents are way too low to justify their costs, at roughly $25K/space for garage construction plus another $500/space in annual maintenance/operating costs.

That goes doubly for this site, which is going to require extensive and expensive pile-driving on the marine clay and landfill down there.

Unless Northland can find a sucker office tenant who's willing to overpay on their rent to make up for the white elephant garage space on the bottom 5 floors, I have a hard time believing this is going anywhere.

 

[Cosakita18]

^ exactly this. It may not seem like it, but the peninsula is drowning in parking. We have more than enough garage capacity to meet existing demand and then some. This project is exactly like Portland square, basically just a few mixed use levels on top of a parking garage.

The problem is outdated zoning laws that require excessive amounts of parking per unit or square foot.(on top of that: a political and development culture that does not have the willpower to disincentize cars)

Hopefully this will begin to change once the recode process is complete, and the city reduces or hopefully eliminates parking minimums