COURTESY / CES INC.
CES Inc. President and CEO Denis St. Peter. CES announced it will move into One Merchants Plaza in Bangor.
Updated: August 23, 2019
CES Inc. headquarters to move to downtown Bangor
Photo / Laurie Schreiber
The planned headquarters of CES Inc. are at One Merchants Plaza in Bangor. Built in 1972, it is home to the Bangor Daily News and UBS.
CES Inc. announced Thursday the company will move its headquarters next year from Brewer to One Merchants Plaza in Bangor.
The firm of engineers, environmental scientists and land surveyors has been based at 465 South Main St. for decades.
“Our current location has served us well over the past 40 years but with our continued growth, we needed more space to accommodate the increasing number of employees who work in our headquarters,” CES President and CEO Denis St. Peter said in a news release.
“With the commitment from the purchaser of the building, David St. Germain, to provide a significant investment in addressing the deferred maintenance, we became very excited about the opportunity. The move also allows us to update our working space to match our goals of attracting and retaining high caliber employees and will be a reflection of our quality and service we provide to clients.”
After hiring 19 employees since January 2017 and predicting more hires in the future, the company’s leadership said a new commercial location was needed.
CES has grown from a two-person civil engineering firm into the multi-disciplined professional consulting company.
“The bigger location will help us adapt to clients’ needs by strategically hiring technical experts in a new service or bringing additional depth to the services we offer,” said St. Peter. “For example, we have hired five employees to bolster our building services work in the past 18 months to accommodate clients’ needs. With the limited space at our current location, we realized that we did not want a physical space to hold us back when it came to adding or expanding a service.”
CES will take over the top two floors at One Merchants Plaza, which is 18,000 square feet, and there are options for additional space and parking needs.
The current location in Brewer is 14,000 square feet. The building is listed with Epstein Commercial Real Estate.
Significant upgrades
The CES announcement comes on the heels of the property’s finalized sale to David St. Germain, who owns the Bangor property management company Sky Villa LLC.
St. Germain purchased the property for $1.85 million in a deal that was finalized yesterday morning.
St. Germain was represented by Bev Uhlenhake of Epstein Commercial Real Estate. The seller, Merchants Plaza LLC, was represented by Charles Day of Porta & Co.
Built in 1972 and home to the Bangor Daily News and UBS, One Merchants Plaza has experienced significant vacancy in recent years.
St. Germain told Mainebiz he will be making significant upgrades to the building.
St. Germain said he started in the residential market about eight years ago with the purchase and redevelopment of apartment buildings.
“At one point we had about 150 apartments throughout Bangor, Brewer and Hampden,” he said. “We slowly transitioned into commercial property. This is probably our fourth major commercial purchase in Bangor.”
About a year ago, he bought the former Verizon building at 6 Telcom Drive in Bangor and has been doing construction there to bring in the Penobscot Community Health Center, which is expected to become operational there in the first week of November.
“I’ve always had a passion for real estate,” he said, adding that he’s been working with First National Bank to finance his projects.
Why One Merchants Plaza?
“It’s an iconic building in downtown Bangor that has had some issues over past years,” he said. “It’s a great project to bring it back to life.”
He said he’s working on façade grant applications through the city. He’ll be overhauling the sixth and seventh floors for CES.
“We’re looking to have a long relationship with them,” he said.
General renovations include upgrades to the HVAC system, lighting and other infrastructure that dates back several decades, he said. Investment for renovation is expected to be approximately $2.2. million.
Functional work space
“As one of the Best Places to Work in Maine, we want to ensure that our employees have a functional work space,” said CES's St. Peter.
“Our leadership team also saw this move as an opportunity to update employee working space to a more modern configuration that capitalizes on the One Merchants Plaza’s natural light and building layout that is conducive to CES’ operating structure.”
CES is expected to make the 2-mile move in the first quarter of 2020 after the improvements to the building and leased space are completed.
CES has offices in Brewer, Saco, Bar Harbor, Lewiston, Machias, Presque Isle and Waterville. Last September, it acquired Bean, Whitaker, Lutz, and Kareh Inc., a 23-person civil engineering and surveying firm in Fort Myers, Fla.
Earlier this year, CES was recognized as the 2019 Business of the Year by the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce.
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