Roux Institute Campus Development | Portland

Agreed. I'm all for building taller - regardless of the location in Portland - but what are the chances what gets built ends up being anywhere near as high as the conceptual drawing?

Also, I'd love to see the jetty (which currently has a building) turn into a Portland (and obviously much scaled down) version of the performance space part of Little Island in NYC. Since it looks like a fairly small space, maybe an L of raked seating so that the performances could happen with bay in the background instead of the interstate or poo plant? The drawing above shows some seating, but I'd love to see that turn into a more official gathering space.
 
I only wanted a small marker/plaque to acknowledge the B&M location and history. This person goes way overboard. And for the record.....I think that the plant should be demolished as well.

Where I differ from some is that history absolutely DOES matter......it's New England....birthplace of the nation for christ's sake! A lot of idealism in Portland.....not a bad thing. But unfortunately, this is Maine.....where idealism morphs into some really bad decisions. Portland is a playground for the rich now. That's not a judgement....just a fact. It is also a very liberal place that overreacts to every social hiccup that comes along. I look at Portland as a place that makes for great magazine covers and articles.....and USA Today rankings. But in reality....there are many issues of planning and infrastructure that the city struggles with. The Roux will get built....too much money behind it not to.....but to me it is just another plop-it-down-where-we-can development. And while it seems like a great incubator for tech....in some ways it may already be obsolete. But I'm sure that it will have plenty of spaces and views for elitists to have killer cocktail parties.
 
True, mainejeff, I primarily agree. Although, we are looking at if from the perspective of Mainers (though, I now mostly work and live in NYC and CA, but am still a Mainer at heart). I have California friends who moved to Portland last year and they are all about nature with a hideaway across the bay from Bar Harbor. They visited the Roux Institute and the setting absolutely blew them away. They commented that to have this kind of technology hub with a stunning view of the harbor, the marina, the narrow gauge railroad, the Eastern Prom Trail, and the award winning neighboring restaurants, is special. Yes, Portland can be for the rich, but there's plenty else for those that aren't.
 
I lived in San Diego for 13 years....lived in the beautiful and historical Mission Hills neighborhood for a portion of that. San Diego has done a great job with the old and new......but it is CA not Maine.
 
TC_zoid said:
Pulled from this letter to the editor: The five bulky stories of the old B&M plant are positively swallowed up by the mass and height of those shining glass monoliths, and any sense of the coastal location completely obscured.

This building has negligible architectural and historical value. It should be demolished. I was in the mid-west for work last month, and city after depressing city featured old abandoned factory buildings like this one. Glass is a beautiful architectural material, and placed alongside something old and worthy (e.g., the Hancock Tower next to Trinity Church in Boston, or the Portland Harbor Hotel addition), can be mutually flattering. This opinionator should study architecture before commenting on it. And this proposal will block its coastal location? What, the view from Interstate 295? Maine has 30,862 miles of virtual forest and now we get 3-4 square miles of a dynamic urban area and people have a problem with it? Simply drive 5 minutes northward and you will see your unspoiled trees and coastline. Portland is now a city of the future, and a city for today's young to have opportunities. Do we, if you were around, miss the old Portland with its vacant downtown and dilapidated buildings, it's "toughs" roaming the Old Port looking for fights and muggings, and the place tourists, etc., drove past? A friend of mine toured Roux and sent me pictures. They have done a brilliant job of designing the interior for today's tech opportunities. It's exciting, and nothing like what I've seen in Maine. It has also created a social setting that makes you want to study there. I can only imagine great, great things with the new campus. The hand-held computer, the smart phone, has been around for a mere 15 years. In another 15 years, this new educational center will put Portland--and Maine--at the forefront of technology innovation. This school represents the future, and ignoring that by older Mainers for opportunities of today's youth is nothing but selfishness. Stop living in the past. It doesn't exist.
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I think what most people don't understand is that pictures like these just depict the maximum zoning/allowed buildout and not what will actually be built (which after going through planning will go through several iterations). This probably also depicts the "possible hotel" on the site, which may never be built. It may help to calm the NIMBY's down if a more realistic depiction were provided (or an aerial/surface level only). NIMBY's freak when they see these massive proposals without having any real context.
 
In tonight's public open house, the development team from IDEALS said that if all goes according to plan, the tallest buildings on the Roux campus would be "between 180 to 200 feet" and that the residential / hotel aspect would be between 15-18 stories.

There's a very rough and preliminary campus master plan that was presented at tonight's meeting. There was a strong emphasis on multimodal connectivity to the campus, with new trail connections and a possible water taxi / shuttle service between the campus and the Old Port and SoPo.

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Maybe the Roux Institute will inspire replacing or fixing the Swing Train Bridge that's been stuck open since 1984. That would be a direct connection to the peninsula. Maybe a "small" commuter rail using Narrow Gauge or a walking bridge.

Sadly it looks like it is slated for partial demo??

Bridge Hunter

bridgehunter.com bridgehunter.com
 
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They'd have to ask that one sailboat that lives in front of the graffiti wall to move.
 
They are probably better off running a pedestrian bridge on side of turkey’s bridge. I don’t know feasibility but it’s shorter and already elevated instead of putting a huge new bridge down below
 
The RR bridge has been partially demolished already. The pilings on the southern approach (from the E. Prom to the steel swing span) were set on fire a few years ago, and have since been removed. My hunch is that it would be extremely difficult to rebuild that bridge at this point with federal permitting requirements for a new structure.

I agree, a bike/ped path cantilevered off the eastern side of Tukey's Bridge – or carved out from the redundant auxiliary lane, which currently forces motorists into a dangerous double-merge to get on 295 northbound – would be much more affordable, and in many ways a better route for bike/ped access into neighborhoods on the peninsula.
 
Did they give a timeline? I wonder if this is one of those "aim high" projects that never gets built?
 
PortlandLifeGuy said:
Did they give a timeline? I wonder if this is one of those "aim high" projects that never gets built?
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I'm sure others on here have a way better feel than I, but I would think 15-18 stories in that location is going to be a steep uphill battle. And given the size of the plot it's not like they can build more lower profile buildings.

Cosakita18 said:
In tonight's public open house
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Was there any public comment allowed or is it too early for that? Wondering how venomous the NIMBYs will be.
 
On an unrelated note, that is perhaps the worst graphic I have ever seen used to illustrate anything. There's no reason to it other than to show 3 clusters of blocks arranged by height. There's no relationship at all to the actual dimensions of the buildings. Each row does not represent a floor, columns do not represent width. Puzzling. Further, the BDN's website is so clunky and bloated with ads it feels like surfing the web circa 1998.
 
Max said:
On an unrelated note, that is perhaps the worst graphic I have ever seen used to illustrate anything. There's no reason to it other than to show 3 clusters of blocks arranged by height. There's no relationship at all to the actual dimensions of the buildings. Each row does not represent a floor, columns do not represent width. Puzzling. Further, the BDN's website is so clunky and bloated with ads it feels like surfing the web circa 1998.
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It may be clunky but they typically have news on Portland business, etc. 12 to 24 hrs. before the Press Herald does.
 
The Roux Institute became the latest entity to try to erect Maine’s tallest building, which would be at the former B&M Baked Beans factory in Portland that the technology graduate school purchased last year.

The new 210-foot building would be part of its campus that would situate its tallest buildings near Interstate 95 and lower buildings near Sherwood Street, the B&M factory and the waterfront, executives with the institute said during a public meeting on rezoning plans last week.

If approved by the city of Portland, that building would be about 21 stories, topping Franklin Towers in Portland, the current highest building in the state at 17 stories. Redfern Properties is planning an 18-story building on Federal Street in Portland that is slated for completion in 2023. It was on track to be Maine’s tallest building.


Roux Institute, a high-tech branch of Northeastern University, also said it will seek City Historic Landmark status for the B&M main factory building, an iconic part of Portland’s skyline.

The institute plans to attract 1,750 students within the next five years and 2,500 in 10 years. It’s rezoning plans include rental housing, a hotel, parking, classrooms and laboratories. It plans to build 175 to 200 residential units initially.

The sharp uptick in people coming to the area, which already has dense traffic, concerned some local residents. Chris Briley, an architect who lives with his fiancé between Sherwood Street and Washington Avenue, said the traffic by his home would increase more than 100 percent.

The Roux Institute is planning alternative forms of transportation, such as a water taxi, and is working with the Greater Portland METRO to encourage public transit and bicycles, Chuck Hewett, a Roux executive, said. The institute plans to have a full-time transportation coordinator.

“We’re also making parking on the site expensive” to discourage people from driving to campus, he said. Northeastern announced the Roux graduate school and research center in 2020 as an effort to alleviate Maine’s workforce shortage and retain talent. So far it has more than 800 students, 54 industry partners and 21 affiliated startup companies. It also has 90 employees between Portland and Boston.
 
I am hoping Nate Moulton from MDOT will realize to open the rail corridor to lewiston and montreal vs the group that wants to tear it up for a bike path. Not holding my breath...LOL
 
This is all good. Roux SHOULD have a bigger building footprint because tech is the dominant economic future--everywhere. Nearby Boston is on its way to becoming the top tech city in the world--Harvard and MIT are key to that happening. Roux needs to have a large student population and on campus residential options. The Portland (and Brunswick) to Boston train tether is part of the reason for all of this. It's an easy and comfortable slightly over two-hour ride. This campus should look and be so futuristic that the average Mainer will have a conniption when they see it. Lol.
 
Not only do I sympathize with the Deering Foreside (as they call themselves) neighborhood over the traffic, but I'd point out that Sherwood St. itself is pretty twisty, industrial in the "truck parking indistinguishable from the street" sense and wholly unsuited to masses of vehicles. Plus you know lots of people will wind up on Kensington, not realizing there's no connection betweeen the two due to the railroad.
 
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