PORTLAND, Maine — The city of Portland will devote $2.7 million to raising the street grade along one side of the four-tower, $150 million Midtown project after councilors passed a slate of measures related to the development Monday night.
Construction on Midtown — which, if all four phases are completed, would include 1.16 million square feet of total building space, as many as 650 market-rate apartments and parking for 1,100 vehicles — has been stalled for months while the developers battle a lawsuit by a group of residents seeking to block the project.
Those legal delays were addressed Monday night by City Council, which voted unanimously to loosen requirements tied to when the developers must break ground on the ambitious project.
Greg Mitchell, Portland’s economic development director, said under the previous language of the city’s deal with the developers that construction was to have begun months ago. But he said with Monday night’s adjustment by the council, Florida-based Federated Cos. developers will have time to let the ongoing court case play out before needing to put shovels in the ground.
“It was our hope that construction would have started last year or the previous year, were it not for the lawsuit,” Mitchell told the Bangor Daily News on Monday. “It’s still our hope and expectation that this project will be underway in the 2015 construction season.”
The council Monday night also voted unanimously to borrow $700,000 to help pay to raise the grade of Somerset Street, between Pearl and Elm streets, by about two feet as part of the project.
That bond money will be combined with $1 million in additional Bayside neighborhood tax revenues earmarked for economic development activities, as well as another $1 million in federal loan and grant money, which previously had been set aside to help one of the area scrap yards relocate from the vicinity.
The combined $2.7 million in city funding will contribute to an overall cost of $4 million to raise the street, with the remaining $1.3 million covered by the developers.
Mitchell said new insurance regulations require the finished first floor of the project be 12 feet above sea level because of growing concerns about sea level rise and flooding. Raising the street by two feet will allow the Midtown project to meet that threshold without using a series of ramps and staircases between the sidewalk and doorways.
“It’s about leveling the street out to match the future requirements for development, and the public benefits are many,” he said. “In the absence of raising the street, you’d have ramps and steps all over the place. … It also addresses utilities and it addresses the localized flooding we experience in that area of Bayside.”
Mitchell also said raising the street would be necessary no matter what project is ultimately built at that location.
“We’ve got a developer who’s willing to cost share about a third of the investment,” he said. “It’s a savings to us to do it now within the framework of this development, versus doing it in the future, presumably with the city bearing 100 percent of the cost.”
The Midtown project has been viewed as a transformational development in the city’s Bayside neighborhood, which for years was known for its massive industrial scrap yards but more recently has undergone a renaissance.
Supporters have lauded Midtown as the sort of signature project that takes Portland to another level in its growth to becoming a premier U.S. city, but detractors have argued its four 15-story towers conflict with the small-city charm that has attracted so much nationwide attention in recent years.
A group of residents formed an opposition group called Keep Portland Livable, members of which filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in February seeking to overturn the city’s approval of the project’s first phase.
That first phase consists of a 165-foot-tall, 235-unit apartment building with nearly 44,000 square feet on the lower floors designated for restaurants and shops and a nearby parking garage that will be 75 feet high and will include 700 spaces. Estimated costs for the first phase are between $45 million and $50 million.
