Avesta Housing will unveil Porter Station, with 60 affordable rental homes

Courtesy / Avesta Housing Avesta Housing's Porter Station, at 200 Valley St. in Portland, has 60 affordable apartments.

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Avesta Housing, the largest nonprofit affordable housing provider in northern New England, will unveil its latest development today.

Porter Station, at 200 Valley St. in Portland, has 60 affordable rental homes.

The $22 million project was managed by Landry/French Construction. Design was by Ryan Senatore Architecture.

A grand opening ceremony was scheduled for 2 p.m. on Thursday, May 2, featuring Andrea Dodge Patstone, coastal region president for MaineHealth and chair of the Avesta Housing board of directors; Portland Mayor Mark Dion; and Kenneth Willis, senior vice president and director of housing and community investment for Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston.

The development is in the St. John Valley neighborhood, once home to the Union Station train station, which was torn down in 1961.

Many of the neighborhood's residents worked at Union Station. One of the porters at the station, Moses Green, was a formerly enslaved person who founded a company that assisted Black residents with housing.

Apartments in the five-story building range from efficiencies to three-bedroom units.

The building also features a community room, indoor bicycle storage, on-site laundry facilities and a covered parking garage. Porter Station uses sustainable design and construction to decrease the building’s carbon footprint, maximize energy efficiency and improve indoor air quality. The parking area features dedicated electric vehicle charging stations.

With the addition of Porter Station, Avesta Housing operates 24 affordable rental properties with a combined total of 1,021 apartment homes in Portland. Including Maine and New Hampshire, Avesta has 100 properties with a combined total of more than 3,000 apartments.