Restoring historic landmarks to their “high tide” is the aim of High Tide Capital, a developer investing an estimated $12 million to $14 million in downtown Bangor makeovers.
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Restoring historic landmarks to their “high tide” is the aim of High Tide Capital, a developer investing an estimated $12 million to $14 million in downtown Bangor makeovers.
Four buildings being redeveloped are all “underutilized gems,” according to Dash Davidson, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based developer and partner in High Tide with Max Patinkin.
“It takes a particular kind of skill set to be good at reworking these buildings,” Davidson says. “Every building is different, and that’s the exciting thing to me.”
The projects, financed in part through state and federal historic tax credits, seek to bring much-needed housing and some commercial space to the 32,000-plus-population city.
At 2 Hammond St., where the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce has its office on the ground floor, High Tide added eight upper-floor apartments in April that are fully leased out. Developers also plan to build a basement “speakeasy,” for which they are seeking an operator.
Among two other projects currently under construction, work at two buildings (at 33 State St. and 213 Exchange St.) collectively known as 33 State is about 75% completed, with 15 apartments slated to be finished by December. Amenities for tenants will include an outdoor roof deck stretching across both buildings. The 33 State building features a store called City Drawers, while a corner commercial space in a former banking hall is still available.
And at 27 State St, the Exchange Building will include 20 apartments and three ground-floor commercial spaces in a project slated for completion in the third quarter of 2023.
“What we do with most of these projects,” Davidson explains, “is to have commercial on the ground floors and very nice apartments on the upper floors. We keep some historic features while adding modern features like open-floor apartments.”
Elsewhere in Maine, High Tide has plans to redevelop Skowhegan’s long-vacant Spinning Mill in a $10 million to $15 million project.
Scott Hanson, a Topsham-based historic preservation consultant and author of a book on restoring historic houses, works with High Tide on all of its projects in Maine.
“Bangor today reminds me very much of Portland in the early 1980s, when it was just starting to see itself in a different light,” Hanson says. “There’s an energy that comes with that, and I’m sensing that in Bangor.”