🔒Commercial development faces challenges, but endures

Maine’s real estate market has had a wild few years and this year, even with all the challenges, looks like the momentum will continue in places.

As we heard at the recent MEREDA Real Estate Forecast Conference and the Mainebiz “5 on the Future” panel, there’s a lot of construction work still in the pipeline. Portland has more than 350 apartments under construction with two major projects and we’re hearing from many contractors that they have work booked well into 2024. Projects are still taking shape. Industrial real estate is still in demand, with very low vacancy rates. There’s more vacant office space, but there’s also talk of converting some office space to residential use and even light-industrial use.

All of this will be tempered by higher interest rates, continued volatility in the cost of construction and materials, labor shortages and the threat of another recession.

One of the areas that has seen a burst of development activity is Lewiston. For our cover story, Laurie Schreiber reports on new commercial, retail and residential development. See “Lewiston levels up,” which starts on Page 14.

For a roundup of voices around the state, Renee Cordes talks to mayors and economic development officials from Lewiston, Auburn, Westbrook, Augusta and Bangor about what they see happening in the real estate realm. See “Word on the street,” which starts on Page 20.

Back to MEREDA: the Mainebiz staff banded together to cover the all-day conference. A full report, “Mixed preview of 2023 offered at MEREDA conference,” starts on Page 24.

Our list in this issue is Maine’s largest commercial property sales, on Page 34.