Portland, ME - New Construction Continued

Courtyard by Marriott, from Danforth Street:
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I'm ready for something ornate and interesting! I'm sick of seeing boxy/recycled/drab/"modern".........most of this new stuff can be described in 2 words.........cheap looking.
 
A nice read in the PPH today about new stuff on the Hill:

New proposal reflects diversifying East End in Portland

The plan for a four-story building with homes and businesses adds to other upscale projects going up on Munjoy Hill.

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The latest project on Munjoy Hill is planned at 118 Congress St., now the site of a one-story building and a parking lot. The building would be demolished and replaced by a four-story building with businesses on the first floor and homes on three levels.

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Excited to hear about that proposal at 118 Congress Street (corner of St. Lawrence Street), this is where that drab one story building is set back from the road by a parking lot. I've always thought this would be a great place for more urban development.
 
mainejeff, not sure if I would classify brick and granite as cheap looking but Portland is an historic New England seaport and I think that structures that are ultra modern in design and materials can clash at least in the Old Port area. The CIEE Building and the new Hyatt on Fore, the Hilton Garden on Commercial, the Intermed Building on Marginal Way, the proposed Westin Event Center in Congress Square, and the new glass inspired design of the CCCC renovation are all examples of an attempt to mix things up a little bit.

In addition, the 15 story Midtown Tower is a definite change of pace if it ends up getting developed in the future. I do not always agree with the architectural plans and choice of materials on some of Portland's recent projects, but I am very pleased to see the amazing amount of new construction and interest in our downtown during a time when most US cities are struggling to maintain the building stock they currently have. We are never going to look like Boston, Hartford of Providence, but for a city of around 70,000, I think we are doing pretty well considering and Portland continues to remain vibrant and relevant.

Corey, I agree with your thought. It is another example of how Portland is succeeding with small to medium infill projects which eliminates vacant or underutilized parcels of land on the peninsula. Now if we could ever get the Top of the Old Port parking lots developed, I would be one happy guy!
 
tazzman said:
I remember when Wilmot Street went to congress street. first Baptist church use to be there
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If you want my honest opinion, this will ensure the site is not developed if the street is reclaimed and instituted. Now, if the City merely stakes a claim on the street to use as leverage, that is less cause for concern regarding future development potential, because it will only add to the City's leverage but not preclude development. But if this becomes a fully functional street again the chances that it remains that way are greater, with a corresponding increase in the chance that this land does not get developed. Why? Because the real estate price is so high that a high floor area ratio is necessary to induce development, in order to ensure an attractive return on investment. To get a suitable FAR, a big building is necessary. This area is adjacent to major thoroughfares, and therefore office use is most likely for any development. However, modern office buildings and their uses require large floor plates, not narrow ones--this is part of the reason why the Fidelity Trust building on Congress Street proposed a 15 story addition, where the former Public Market now stands, which would have enabled it to compete with One City Center etc. By disaggregating the parcels here, a project like Lincoln Square (1988) or Lincoln Center (2004) becomes less feasible, and the smaller projects while still possible from s structural standpoint become unaffordable. The land will be most profitable as a parking lot, as has been the case for 25 years.
 
PortlandArch said:
If you want my honest opinion, this will ensure the site is not developed if the street is reclaimed and instituted. Now, if the City merely stakes a claim on the street to use as leverage, that is less cause for concern regarding future development potential, because it will only add to the City's leverage but not preclude development. But if this becomes a fully functional street again the chances that it remains that way are greater, with a corresponding increase in the chance that this land does not get developed. Why? Because the real estate price is so high that a high floor area ratio is necessary to induce development, in order to ensure an attractive return on investment. To get a suitable FAR, a big building is necessary. This area is adjacent to major thoroughfares, and therefore office use is most likely for any development. However, modern office buildings and their uses require large floor plates, not narrow ones--this is part of the reason why the Fidelity Trust building on Congress Street proposed a 15 story addition, where the former Public Market now stands, which would have enabled it to compete with One City Center etc. By disaggregating the parcels here, a project like Lincoln Square (1988) or Lincoln Center (2004) becomes less feasible, and the smaller projects while still possible from s structural standpoint become unaffordable. The land will be most profitable as a parking lot, as has been the case for 25 years.
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Yes, but what is in higher demand in the city right now and for the forseeable future - office or residential? The commerical vacany rate in Downtown Portland is around 13%, so theoretically there is still plenty of supply. The only way you can justify an office tower right now is to bring a new company into the area to fill it. Nobody is going to speculative built an office tower with a 13% vacancy rate and no apparent local company growing at an astronomical clip to potentially fill such a space (Idexx is already making a long-term home in Westbrook, and WEX seems to want to stay put in SoPo).

It'd be nice to keep this property vacant until maybe someday someone builds a landmark skyscraper for the city, but the more years that go by, the more I think that will simply never happen. If it didn't come to fruition during the speculative building boom of the 80's, it certainly isn't going to happen now in the post real estate bubble and post Great Recession era. It's too damn hard to get the financing.

Don't forget, there is a good chance that Franklin Street in this location moves eastward at some point, potentially enlarging the parcel. You could fit a nice residential tower in that footprint, and the remaining Top of the Old Port parking lot footprint is still big enough to fit two sizeable office buildings. Seriously, look at it on a map. You could fit One City Center, One Monument Square and Two Monument Square into that remaining parcel and still have room for a parking garage. It's still a big piece of property even if it is split up.
 
Patrick said:
Thanks Mark,

That photo is a copy of a scan uploaded to this site based on a picture provided by one of the members. The facebook page is also hosted by a member of this site. Cool project!
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It would have been a cool project... unfortunately, it was one of the last two big projects proposed at the end of the 80's building boom, after the '87 stock market crash, and it never happened. (The other one was Eastern Point, which would have been in the area where Ocean Gateway is now; it was one of the major catalysts for the so-called "working waterfront referendum.") I'm sorry that I didn't realize that the photo came from this site in the first place (although I do recall seeing John French's name in quite a few threads).

13% downtown Class A vacancy? Wow. While I realize that a lot of the second wave of downtown office tower construction in the 80's was driven by Unum's policy of trying to divide up its profit centers (their logo was on almost every new building at the time), I didn't know that their contraction and the bank consolidations had left that much space.
 
Portland's downtown Class A office vacancy rate of 12.37% is actually down from the previous year and quite healthy compared to other New England cities like Hartford (25%) and Providence (17%). I think it would take a mixed use type of structure to achieve the height (250 ft) and or floor count (20) on that parcel. The building could combine residential, office, parking and possibly even hotel space to accomplish this lofty goal.

This concept is becoming a popular approach in cities all around the country. Would be nice to lure either UNUM, WEX or IDEXX downtown for the location of their corporate headquarters or regional in UNUM's case.
 
Portlander said:
I think it would take a mixed use type of structure to achieve the height (250 ft) and or floor count (20) on that parcel. The building could combine residential, office, parking and possibly even hotel space to accomplish this lofty goal.
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Agreed. Wasn't Boulos' proposed tower there going to be mized use?

Portlander said:
This concept is becoming a popular approach in cities all around the country. Would be nice to lure either UNUM, WEX or IDEXX downtown for the location of their corporate headquarters or regional in UNUM's case.
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Unum will never leave their Congress Street campus. They like that location and actually moved their executive offices from One City Center to that campus in the early 2000's. They put a lot of money into building the HO3 building and renovating the HO1 and HO2 buildings, and I’m pretty sure they own all three of those outright.

With the money IDEXX is dumping into their campus in Westbrook with the new building they just completed (which I keep meaning to get a picture of and post here) and another potential addition in a few years, I doubt their going to move now. The time to lure them was a few years ago before they decided to plant their roots in Westbrook.

WEX is the wild card here. They've been tied to the office building proposed at Thompson's Point, but they've also stated their desire to grow at their current location (and judging by what I can see on Google Maps, it appears they have the space to grow there). You can't rule them out completely, but the time to get them to commit to a new tower in Downtown Portland would be over the next two years. After that they're going to follow Unum and IODEXX and plant their roots somewhere for the long-term.

Outside of WEX, I can't think of any other local company that is large and/or growing enough to occupy a significant amount of office space in a new downtown tower. The only other candidate could be an insurance company that might want to increase its presence here and feed off to the Unum training grounds (as Aetna and Prudential have already done and The Standard did before closing their local office about five years ago). Maybe United Health Group?

There are some smaller companies with huge potential that don’t seem to be growing very fast, like Immucell. Are there any growing IT start-ups around here that might take off eventually?
 
Good points Dr. S. My hope is that one of those large firms would at least locate their Corporate Headquarters downtown even if it's space in an existing building such as One Monument Square. I realize that the most of previously mentioned businesses are committed to their current locations for a majority of their operations, but having the executive/legal departments downtown instead of in the suburbs would be impressive and might even include building naming rights. Would love to see the IDEXX or WEX logo on the crown portion of 1MS as I am heading down Congress Street.
 
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Dr. StrangeHat said:
Agreed. Wasn't Boulos' proposed tower there going to be mized use?



Unum will never leave their Congress Street campus. They like that location and actually moved their executive offices from One City Center to that campus in the early 2000's. They put a lot of money into building the HO3 building and renovating the HO1 and HO2 buildings, and I’m pretty sure they own all three of those outright.

With the money IDEXX is dumping into their campus in Westbrook with the new building they just completed (which I keep meaning to get a picture of and post here) and another potential addition in a few years, I doubt their going to move now. The time to lure them was a few years ago before they decided to plant their roots in Westbrook.

WEX is the wild card here. They've been tied to the office building proposed at Thompson's Point, but they've also stated their desire to grow at their current location (and judging by what I can see on Google Maps, it appears they have the space to grow there). You can't rule them out completely, but the time to get them to commit to a new tower in Downtown Portland would be over the next two years. After that they're going to follow Unum and IODEXX and plant their roots somewhere for the long-term.

Outside of WEX, I can't think of any other local company that is large and/or growing enough to occupy a significant amount of office space in a new downtown tower. The only other candidate could be an insurance company that might want to increase its presence here and feed off to the Unum training grounds (as Aetna and Prudential have already done and The Standard did before closing their local office about five years ago). Maybe United Health Group?

There are some smaller companies with huge potential that don’t seem to be growing very fast, like Immucell. Are there any growing IT start-ups around here that might take off eventually?
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Whether its mixed use or not is something the developer can figure out on the basis of market trends, but the fact is that a large building of some sort is necessary there because of land economics and return on investment necessary to support the purchase price. I'll also note that I wouldn't be surprised if some of these major headquarters do in fact move back downtown. It's already happening elsewhere (Detroit, Boston, NYC). The economy is shifting toward a service one away from manufacturing and more people than ever are moving to urban centers. Young people who are innovative and drive economic development locate in cities they want to as opposed to need to be in, and Portland is a place people want to be in. Therefore, a Google or Yahoo! other creative sort of company which would or may be looking to grow its presence in the northeast just might look at Portland (or Portsmouth or Burlington) as a cheaper alternative to Boston, but it would probably never look at South Portland or Westbrook because the people who work for those companies don't want to be there. They want wi-fi, coffee houses, restaurants, bars, theaters, etc. Portland has that so it wouldn't be out of the question to recruit a major new company (or several) to share a prime office location two easy blocks from the highway, ferry terminal, and one of the coolest little downtowns in America.
 
Assuming this construction is related to the new Portland Yacht Services boatyard which is relocating from Fore Street:

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