Portland: Panel to screen consultants for Bayside development
PORTLAND ? Several consulting teams have offered to help Portland officials develop six acres of former railroad land on Somerset Street in Bayside.
A selection committee will interview three of the teams on Thursday and hire one soon afterward, said Jack Lufkin, Portland's economic development director.
The city plans to sell the land, as a whole or in pieces, to developers who would build several office and/or retail buildings and a parking garage. The city is seeking a consulting team to figure out the best way to do that. The city received six bids, ranging from $518,000 to $1.8 million.
The three firms chosen to be interviewed fell in the middle: Harriman & Associates offered to do the work for $907,000, followed by Winton Scott Architects at $831,000 and Scott Simons Architects at $768,000, according to city documents.
Portland: Hospital makes changes to its planned campus
PORTLAND ? Mercy Hospital has made some changes to its planned campus along the Interstate 295 connector to Commercial Street.
The hospital's proposal, discussed Tuesday in a Planning Board workshop, now calls for an 80,000-square-foot medical office building on the north side of the campus rather than the center of the site.
The building will be owned by Landmark Inc., a medical office developer in Milwaukee, Wis., said Timothy Prince, Mercy's vice president of planning.
The building was moved to improve the campus layout, traffic flow and parking plan, Prince said. The $160 million project, to be built in two phases, is expected to be finished in 2012. The office building is part of the first phase, which includes a 137,000-square-foot short-stay hospital, to be completed by fall 2008, Prince said.
Portland: Planning Board reviewing proposal for Village Cafe site
PORTLAND ? The Planning Board began its review Tuesday of the latest scaled-down proposal for the Village Cafe site on the East End. Some members still have concerns about the project's size and design.
The proposal from GFI Residential of Boston now calls for 176 two-bedroom condominiums in four buildings. They would include four or five stories of living space above one or two parking levels, according to city documents.
The Village at Ocean Gate would cover two acres at Newbury, Hancock and Middle streets. It would include street-level commercial space for the restaurant and other enterprises.
GFI originally proposed five buildings ranging from six to nine stories and containing 250 condominiums.
Bayside project wins final approval
Avesta Housing has resurrected and redesigned its plan to build 115 homes where an industrial warehouse now stands in Portland's Bayside neighborhood.
Pearl Place is among more than $100 million worth of commercial and residential projects planned or proposed in a downtown neighborhood that city officials targeted for redevelopment six years ago.
The development, which received final approval Tuesday, will return multifamily housing to where many families lived before houses were torn down to make way for industrial development.
The new plan for Pearl Place, at 210 Pearl St., calls for two buildings with a total of 60 subsidized apartments along Oxford and Pearl streets.
The Planning Board unanimously approved a retooled proposal Tuesday evening that combines the first two phases of the project. Future phases would include as many as 40 market-rate condominiums and 15 additional apartments.
A year ago, the board approved a first phase that called for 30 townhouse-style subsidized apartments in two buildings on Oxford Street.
However, construction estimates came in $500,000 over budget, forcing Avesta to delay the project for a year and seek additional funding from the Maine State Housing Authority, said Jay Waterman, Avesta's development director.
Avesta then combined the project's first and second phases and redesigned the project to consist of conventional one-, two- and three-bedroom units. The state, in turn, doubled its low-income tax credit financing to $9.7 million, Waterman said.
"The idea here is to get better economies of scale," Waterman said.
Avesta plans to start building the redesigned project in October and complete it by November 2007.
Waterman said plans to build market-rate condos along Lancaster Street depend on whether the city is successful in relocating E. Perry Iron & Metal Co., a scrap-metal recycling yard. City officials are negotiating with the owners, said Jack Lufkin, Portland's economic development director.
A 2000 report identified the neighborhood's two metal scrap yards as "the single most inhibiting factor to the successful redevelopment of Bayside."
The report also called for the addition of 500 housing units in the neighborhood.
Financing for the $13 million project includes a $255,000 bank loan that will be repaid through the city's first tax break for affordable housing. Waterman said 70 percent of property taxes paid on the project will go toward paying off the loan over the next 20 years.
Rents at Pearl Place would be set at levels considered affordable for tenants with household incomes at 50 percent to 60 percent of Portland's median, according to Avesta's written proposal.
More than 80 percent of rental households in Portland have annual incomes below $37,500, making them potentially eligible for Pearl Place, the proposal said.
Rents would be $600 to $730 per month for a one-bedroom apartment, $730 to $875 for two bedrooms, and $850 to $1,000 for three bedrooms.
The three- to five-story buildings would have flat roofs, sliding glass doors to small balconies, brick and blue corrugated-metal siding, and steel mesh accents.
The project would have 60 parking spaces, a community room, a shared rooftop deck, elevators, laundry rooms and a wide variety of energy-saving building materials and amenities.
