PORTLAND, Maine — A developer submitted plans Monday to build the new waterfront headquarters of Wex, Maine’s second largest publicly traded company.
A week after the City Council approved the $3.3 million sale of the lot for the project, development company 0 Hancock Street LLC filed formal plans for a four-story building on Thames Street.
The building is proposed at more than 100,000 square feet, most of which would house the payment processing company, which now has its headquarters in South Portland.
Wex has agreed to sign a long-term lease on about 80 percent of the building, and the development is expected to bring as many as 450 jobs to the downtown core of Maine’s largest city. The rest of the building would be used as retail space, according to the proposal.
The proposal will next be assessed by a city planner before being submitted to the planning board for public review.
The city announced in late July that it had selected the proposal from Wex and 0 Hancock Street LLC as a development plan for the 48,000-square-foot section of a city-owned property on Thames Street.
Wex handles payment processing for commercial and government vehicle fleets in the U.S., Canada and other countries. It follows animal testing products maker Idexx Laboratories Inc. as the second largest publicly traded company in Maine and employs about 800 of its workers at its campus in South Portland.
Wex posted strong growth in the second quarter of 2017 with revenue up 30 percent from a year earlier.
Last week, the firm won approval to provide technology to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, potentially opening up a large new area of business.