Portland, ME - New Construction Continued

Nice find Max, will be an excellent addition to that entrance point onto Congress Street.
 
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Rufus Deering Lumber Site had its master development plan permit materials filed today. I suspect the press will report on this with renderings (scale models only at this stage) tomorrow. A master development plan freezes existing permits in place for up to ten years and allows a phased construction.
 
http://www.pressherald.com/2017/02/...arking-garage-planned-for-portlands-old-port/

New proposal for a hotel /office / parking garage complex on Chandler's Wharf, next to the site of Portland Lobster Co. Which would be demolished.

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Man, the public is going to be in a fury over that one. I can hear the pitchforks clanging already.
 
I was against seeing the PLC go until I saw the renderings of that space. Looks like better public access and open view to the water? If that is the case then I see this as a positive. Massive parking lots on the water don't make a lot of sense.
 
Quite possible that the Portland Lobster Company would have an option on retail space fronting Commercial Street if this project gets developed. They may even get a deal similar to Joe's Variety in the new apartment building on Congress Street. I agree with mainejeff, the public access is a huge improvement over the current setting and will turn this area of the waterfront into a central focal point.
 
Personally I would like to see PLC stay. It has character where it is now, and it's become somewhat of a local landmark. Go on Instagram and you can find hundreds of pictures of the sign and building.

Aside from that, I think this project could really enhance that area of Commercial St.
 
I think the new Chandler's Wharf proposal looks pretty good. I'm not particularly attached the Portland Lobster Company building which is vacant for half the year. Whether we need more hotel rooms is up for debate, but a well-designed building could presumably be retrofitted for other uses in the future.

AC/Marriott Hotel, corner of Fore & Hancock Street
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16 Middle Street
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667 Congress / The Hiawatha
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Corey, I think we need you to post a couple of Portland pics in the Skylines thread :) .
 
62 India Street is being marketed as the "Mason Block" with an updated rendering and anticipated completion in Spring 2018. I don't know who's buying all these $750,000 condos all over the city but I say welcome!

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It looks like a nice addition to the neighborhood. Has ground been broken?
 
Portlander said:
Yes, about a month ago and progressing nicely.
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I reviewed the pricing and noticed that there is actually a fair degree of variability in the units, with the ~$700k units appearing to represent the rooftop penthouses with water-facing decks. Compared to other markets (Portsmouth, Boston), that would seem to be a steal for such amenities, not to mention the surrounding neighborhood's tremendous anticipated appreciation from all of the other things in the works. If in a few years you can walk from a place like this to (a) downtown (particularly with a more integrated Federal Street if that happens), (b) Munjoy Hill, (c) the Old Port, and (D) the new neighborhood potentially taking shape east of the Thames Street, this will be a $1 million ++ location easily. The same thing has happened recently in Boston Seaport, which this is similar to on a small scale in terms of downtown adjacency and explosive growth. Property values have risen so fast there that they've outpaced the Backbay and Downtown for residential and office, respectively, and units are flipping in the new condo towers before they're even built.

Also, a lot of buyers are coming from the suburban areas where unless you live there you might not typically go, but if you do drive through you'll notice a lot of $1M homes in places like Cumberland, Falmouth, etc. etc. Those people have children who are now adults and they are still working, in their peak earning years, and looking for classy places to call home. It wouldn't be a stretch for them to trade in their behemoth McMansions and follow the modern trend toward reurbanization at a lower overall cost even if at a higher cost per square foot. Most people can't afford these places, but there are plenty of people who can. If we think of all the new construction, let's say it's 2,000 units in the last few years (a stretch), even if they were all luxury that's still a drop in the bucket of the population of Greater Portland -- in fact it's less than the top 1% of earners. That's who's buying these places, in addition to people who want partial year residences and live in major urban markets elsewhere.
 
Patrick, you're right, there's clearly a market for this kind of housing, otherwise it wouldn't be getting built.

I'm still (pleasantly) shocked by the shear numbers of them going up and being proposed. I feel like these kind of modern condos were virtually nonexistent in Portland ten years ago.

I was just reviewing the updated proposal for the former Rufus Deering site on Commercial Street. They want to build it out in phases, but ultimately they want to build 275 condos!
 
Max said:
Patrick, you're right, there's clearly a market for this kind of housing, otherwise it wouldn't be getting built.

I'm still (pleasantly) shocked by the shear numbers of them going up and being proposed. I feel like these kind of modern condos were virtually nonexistent in Portland ten years ago.

I was just reviewing the updated proposal for the former Rufus Deering site on Commercial Street. They want to build it out in phases, but ultimately they want to build 275 condos!
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Yeah, you're right. There was a period of time between the early 1990s and mid-2000s where virtually no new housing at all was built downtown. For me, that represented most of my childhood, so it felt like the City was just a constant place with no change at all in the real estate world. With that frame of reference, the growth is really spectacular. When comparing Portland to other cities we can see that the same thing is happening everywhere else too. I think what it is is a reversal of suburbanization to an extent as the inner suburbs shift market preferences for walkable urban neighborhoods. The amount of development on a regional scale probably hasn't increased too much, but it's much more visible now because it's configured in a more urban manner. I think Rufus will be approved in phases, but may get built in one phase. In Portland, you can freeze approvals in place for 10 years but you can build as quickly as the market will let you. I think there's room for 275 condos over a period of years. That's not far off from what was originally planned for the Watermark site (now an AC Marriott hotel under construction) a decade ago. And the same developer built the Bay House, Newbury St. Lofts, and the condo building going up on India (I believe) so they should know the market well.
 
Looks like something big is in the works down by the Maine Mall.

http://sentry.mainelymediallc.com/news/2017-04-07/Front_Page/Skys_the_limit_in_South_Portland.html

The stage has been set for construction of an apartment building in the Maine Mall area that would be the third tallest building in the state.

At its meeting on Tuesday, April 4, the South Portland Planning Board voted unanimously to recommend passage by the city council of zoning changes that would extend the “suburban commercial” (CS) district on the city’s west end. If adopted, the new zone would eliminate residential density limits and allow construction of apartment buildings up to 156 feet tall. Allowing for clearance for the top of an elevator shaft, that would be enough for 14 stories of housing.
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Does anyone know anything more about this?
 
Patrick said:
Yeah, you're right. There was a period of time between the early 1990s and mid-2000s where virtually no new housing at all was built downtown. For me, that represented most of my childhood, so it felt like the City was just a constant place with no change at all in the real estate world.
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I was around well before that. I remember the Maineway project and early tower construction in the early 70's as part of my early childhood, wandered around town on my own in my tween years when the Golden Triangle was still a parking lot, and then the 80's boom (One City Center, Portland Square, 100 Middle, the abortive Lincoln Square and Eastern Point projects). So my ideas of what intown Portland ought to be always have, and still do, revolve around office towers rather than residential.

Cosakita18 said:
Looks like something big is in the works down by the Maine Mall.

http://sentry.mainelymediallc.com/news/2017-04-07/Front_Page/Skys_the_limit_in_South_Portland.html

Does anyone know anything more about this?
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Just what it said in the article: there's one proposal next to Home Depot in the Clark's Pond area, and another up at Sable Oaks. Neither of those have had the infill projects they originally planned for, so why not try residential.
 
Ha. Maine, the only place in the world in which people call 14 story buildings, "towers." It's these types of words that scare people, because a tower implies tall, height, and something that you can fall off of. If you call them mid-rise buildings, then that is more accurate. It doesn't sound so scary, you know? And there are people in Portland who thought the Federated project ("4 towers") was going to create nasty street level winds that would of knocked people over, thus injuring them. I don't see this mindset going away in the near future, or until all the baby boomers here are six feet under, anyway.
 
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