Portlander
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3 Portland Square, I really hope this gets built someday!
The Casco | 201 Federal Street | Portland
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3 Portland Square, I really hope this gets built someday!
Portlander
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My former father in law used to have a used car business on the western portion of that lot in the sixties. It is a waste but I guess the current owners have been making enough revenue over the years to maintain it's current use as parking.
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This side is great - they just need to work on the other four sides. I'd really hate to see 5 or 6 floors (or whatever it is) of parking garage visible - they've got to hide it. And then we'd have to hope that the housing above the parking garage gets built or it's just another parking garage taking up most of a block.
matt.greeson
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Portlander
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Nice shot Matt, really shows off the "cluster" we were discussing earlier. Shame on you for not flying Delta! 
matt.greeson
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I would be thrilled if my most frequent destination were a Delta hub rather than American!
From the planning board materials for 40 Free Street in June 2019: "The applicant has expressed a desire to redevelop the southern parcel at a future date. Spring Street, which borders the site to the south, has two years remaining on a five-year moratorium on any street openings."
I have a vague recollection that during the site plan discussion with the planning board, the developers said they planned to ultimately develop the other parcel to the maximum height allowed on Spring Street. There was some talk of the strange elevation difference between the parcel and the sidewalk on Spring, there is a steep 7-8 foot slope down from the parcel to the sidewalk, which apparently was a legacy of Spring being opened up to Temple/Union some years ago.
TC_zoid
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Looks a bit taller than our thread projections. It would be even sweeter with a 50-foot high transmission tower with multiple flashing red lights, affixed to the mechanical room roof. That way, you might see it peaking up from the Western Prom hill when approaching from the south on 295.Nice shot Matt, really shows off the "cluster" we were discussing earlier. Shame on you for not flying Delta!
Portlander
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Yeah, I'm a little surprised how imposing the building is compared to One City Center and there are still a few more floors to go before it's topped out.
TC_zoid
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That's because Redfern was kind of brilliant in disguising it from the NIMBYS with the design releases. Remember the Federated fiasco with the Miami Beach towers proposed for Bayside? What were they thinking? They weren't.
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Smuttynose
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I am excited to see the tower finished, but I'd love to see the buildings around it redeveloped eventually (after the Downtown surface lots are of course). I don't understand the extreme aversion to building height which seemed to promote the development of so many of these chubby mini towers. Portland's regs don't make any sense. A maximum 210-foot height limit and only for a few blocks of Downtown? What a small, and weirdly specific, number. I mean if a well designed slender 250-foot tower was built with pedestrian-oriented public spaces would that be the end of the world? Wouldn't that be miles better than a sprawling 100-foot building that takes up half a city block? There's a bit too much pearl-clutching and a degree of regulation, especially related to building height, that is not appropriate for a city that I'd argue ranks among the top three most vibrant in New England and should be striving to grow, evolve, and be more inclusive.
Well, Le Courbusier designed a Paris plan with hundreds of much taller buildings but it seems to have done just “fine” with the mostly six- or seven-story buildings Haussmann specified. And it’s still one of the most dense, use-diverse and dynamic cities in the world.
Portland lost so much density and population to the Gruen plan but it did — as pointed out on this blog — maintain a fair amount of density and a strong mix of uses on the peninsula, thankfully, because of which it is today — as also pointed out on this blog — a highly desirable home and destination for world travelers.
In fact it appears that Portland’s engaging street life, culture and architectural integrity may be far greater contributors to a successful urbanscape than an array of taller buildings (I’d say Hartford, Springfield, Manchester, Worcester prove that point without looking too far afield).
I’m certainly not opposed to taller buildings but they do not by rights make a city a more interesting or dynamic place.
While Bayside and Forest Avenue just off the peninsula could anmd perhaps should accommodate much higher zoning, the original core along Congress and downtown should keep those conservative height limits.
Well it would diminish City Hall on the skyline! (said someone on HPB during 201 review - thankfully they didn't hold on to that view)
Right. I'm not for height for height's sake, though. Portland metro needs ~8000 units (according to 2019 Up for Growth data) - and look at the trend, it has been getting worse. That number is probably higher after the pandemic - and as the climate becomes more extreme in other areas of the country, Portland is going to look better and better. The supply/demand number needs to be evened out (and not just high end condos) and stay on track for growth if we have any hope of being remotely affordable to anyone other than transplants with high paying out of state jobs. And yes, all those units don't need to be created on the peninsula. But why not?
I used to be one who thought the efficiencies of urban density in a city like Portland were important to sustainability - but in reality, is that ever going to be the case? Once we transition to EVs and sustainable power generation, the transportation argument becomes less of a thing (but more traffic is less convenient and less efficient in other ways). And people are working at home more, needing transportation fewer times during the day - but is that going to last? If previously 100% remote work turns into a split, do people travel a few days a week or look for work locally? If a more experienced workforce exists and Portland attracts more tech/biotech/startups/any type of business and they need a physical presence, where are they going to go? Probably not downtown. So then if there are tall residential clusters on the peninsula but the biotech company that everyone works for is on Riverside, how do they get out there? Plenty of discussion about the issues of increasing mass transit options on this forum, but that needs to be a continuing, parallel conversation with any density discussion. I also recognize that not everyone moving to Maine (or moving within Maine) wants to live in a place of density - some want land.
But why limit heights down Congress, in Bayside, down Forest, or really anywhere in Portland because of skyline aesthetics, a tall building being built next to a short building, or people being scared of change? Look at Portland House or EP Towers - do they still look out of place? Yes, but everyone has survived and nobody (that I'm aware of) is complaining (anymore). I agree with TC's earlier post about the juxtaposition of low slung historic structures in Boston against much taller buildings - does it feel different, is it a different experience? Yes. I'm not saying existing structures along Congress should be torn down, but for empty lots or structures which can't be salvaged, why limit the height? (Maybe the answer is in my previous paragraph. What amount of density - thinking holistically - make sense in Portland, when does/can it become unmanageable?)
I also agree with Gil above that taller buildings don't necessarily make a city more interesting or dynamic - and often it can be very much the opposite. To that I would say - I hope that those in the city that have input over design of new construction - and developers - take the street level experience seriously and they don't just give us the side of a parking garage.
OK, that's enough of an incoherent, meandering, half baked, hot take for a Thursday morning.
DanielPWM19
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This is music to my ears and literally everything I've been talking about. I love the "chubby" buildings phrasing - I usually use "stout". It's like the buildings are all too polite to be taller than one another. Portland has lacked vision for a long time and let VERY MISGUIDED NIMBY's have too much of a voice. Especially when some of those NIMBY's are only part-time Portland residents.
Just like the opposition to Midtown and shadows? Come on. And the "Save the Soul" of Portland group was totally full of it. One of their leaders didn't want her view blocked by the Fore Street development - yet did she care about the views of the people she blocked when she built her house equipped with an elevator? Of course not. There was this weird opposition to the Eimskip freezer development where a woman complained about how she liked the view when she commuted in the morning. What view? The South Portland oil tanks? Other residents on Munjoy balked at a housing project that would bring people of color too close to their condos.
Portland needs to build UP not OUT. We have the "precious" barren parking lots to build upon, so let's use them and not have gross suburban sprawl.
Paris also has a skyline that's about the equivalent of Boston's, and is continuing to add to it at the very top levels. Paris isn't building more "historic" 6-7 story buildings to continue filling out the city. Now it's mainly just building up, because it has to.
Most of the cities listed demolished too much of their historical density, and/or weren't that great to begin with. Certainly from a location standpoint, Portland crushes the above without competition. I am most familiar with what happened to Hartford, although I assume the other cities must have had their own (less extreme) versions of the same. In Hartford there were grand plans in the 1980's, to the extent they were literally about to build 4 towers that all rivaled the Pru and Hancock (2 eclipsed 800' and would have been the tallest in New England). Hartford literally demoed large sections of their downtown for these 4 buildings, as well as for the highways that still run through it. Unfortunately, the recession hit so instead of comparing the vitality of tall buildings to the low buildings they replaced, we were instead left with empty lots and a divided/devastated downtown.
The real question is, would taller buildings on the empty lots in downtown Portland make it a more interesting or dynamic place? Everything else is a non sequitur, especially those comparisons to the other cities above.
I'd say the taller buildings would certainly bring the interest in spades. As long as they have street level activation, they'd bring an increased dynamism to the city as well.
I regularly hear the same terrible argument on the Boston side of this forum. "Well, we don't want to become like Atlanta" or something else ridiculous. Filling in an empty parcel with a tall tower isn't going to make Boston more like Atlanta. Filling in the empty parcel, and then demolishing the surrounding buildings so the parcel is surrounded by grass and parking lots would be the way to make Boston more like Atlanta, and that's never what the proposals are about. Same thing here in Portland. Filling in empty lots is only going to improve the city. If you are implying that taller buildings require demolition of shorter buildings, they certainly don't have to when I see all the open lots still available. Otherwise, without removing any of the old city around it, how would taller new-builds diminish Portland in any way, shape, or form?
DanielPWM19
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Love all of this. Portland has plenty of room. If we want some stout buildings, perhaps along the Forest Ave corridor for a more urban boulevard. There's plenty of wasted space there too. Not to mention redoing Franklyn Arterial as an urban boulevard which would open up a ton of space to develop.
If you google earth Portland the number of open lots (even for just a triple decker) is astounding. There's been a lot of reaction on Munjoy when entire homes have been moved or demolished for small condo buildings. And I get the trepidation around that. Though many of these buildings do make some of the neighborhoods nicer and cleaner. Some of the buildings removed weren't all that great to begin with. But this isn't the scale of losing the train stations, theaters, and some of the other historic mistakes Portland made. We can't do anything about that now.
What I don't want to see are more parking garages with crappy retail options. Have more vision than that. Building UP (especially with some good, timeless architecture) wouldn't really have that much impact on the downtown or old port.
This is the point. Truly great cities are defined by the street-level experience.
Seanflynn78
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Portland seems to be loaded with residents who can't grasp the concept of urban planning involving high-density housing- with double-digit stories. These hypocrites seem fine with whatever apartment they own, but they want Portland to be trapped in time or stay almost identical to what they see fit. Basically, the attitude of "let me build or renovate my McMansion/townhouse, but don't you dare block my view of the harbor/Fore river or hamper the vista I admire while I stroll by while pontificating about my disdain for today's young people. Portland is evolving and yes it will continue to change for the better as long as developers continue to see a positive return on their investment. This is why I admire the attitude of NYC residents, where "we will knock it down, build it bigger and better- full steam ahead!", but also pay respect to the historical aspect of what was previously there if it had a cultural or architectural significance to the neighborhood. Build it and build up, as Portland is a such highly desired place to call home. Portland is such a unique city when you compare it to other urban regions of New England, so let's hope Portland will rise again!