Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
The buyer plans to renovate Chisholm House at 231 Western Promenade for his own use.
Updated: March 31, 2022
Maine Med sells historic Portland homes, which once housed hospital staff, in $5M deal
Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
Hand-painted wallpaper in the entry of 231 Western Promenade depict scenes of gentlemen riding through town in their carriages.
Maine Medical Center has sold a portfolio of historic homes, once used as rooming houses for hospital personnel, to a private buyer who plans to renovate them for residential use.
Quercus Alba LLC/Quercus Rubra LLC bought two homes, two carriage houses and a vacant lot on the Western Promenade, behind the hospital’s Portland campus, for $4.85 million.
Jennifer Small, Joe Malone and Mark Malone of Malone Commercial Brokers represented the seller and Alessandra Malone of Waypoint Brokers Collective acted on behalf of an anonymous buyer. The transaction closed March 15.
The original listing included a home at 112 West St., a home and carriage house at 231 Western Promenade, and a vacant lot at 227 Western Promenade.
The properties are all adjacent to each other.
The list price for the original portfolio was $4,495,400.
The buyer scooped up another abutting property that wasn’t on the market — a carriage house with nearby acreage at 94 and 98 Chadwick St.
That brought the total purchase price to $4.85 million.
Plenty of interest
Maine Med had been using the buildings for years, most recently as housing for its residents working at the hospital, Small told Mainebiz.
“The reason for them to sell was that they were looking to divest the properties,” she said.
The portfolio was on the market less than a month.
“We had lot of interest from a spectrum of buyers,” said Small. “We took over a dozen prospects through the property. Most were looking for residential conversions — condos, apartments, single-family homes. This truly was a rare opportunity for someone to control this exquisite residential portfolio in the highly sought-after Western Prom location.”
Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
Thomas House at 112 West St. was relisted on the market shortly after it was acquired as part of a larger portfolio.
Most of the queries came from local residential developers.
The structures were all single-family homes before they were converted by Maine Med to serve as residences for medical staff, while also retaining historic features such as fabric wall coverings, period murals, hand-carved fireplaces with wood and tile surrounds, and spiral staircases.
The portfolio was marketed for its residential conversion potential in a prime location at the edge of Western Promenade, with views of South Portland and Mount Washington.
Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
The portfolio of Western Promenade homes sold for $4.85 million. The original listed properties are seen here.
112 West St. is known as the Thomas House and comprises 11,080 square feet on one-third acre. Built in 1910, the property features include a hip roof with a widow’s walk.
231 Western Promenade includes two buildings — a home known as the Chisholm House and a carriage house. The 8,503-square-foot Chisholm House was built in 1898. The 2,720-square-foot carriage house was built a couple of years later. Together they occupy just shy of an acre.
Abutting 231 Western Promenade is a one-third-acre vacant lot at 227 Western Promenade.
The properties are in the West End Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
231 Western Promenade
Alessandra Malone said the buyer preferred to remain anonymous but is a Portland resident who lives in the West End and has long admired the buildings.
“He did a historic renovation and really enjoyed the process,” she said. “He plans to do the same here.”
Maine Med owned the portfolio since around the 1960s, she said. The organization was careful to preserve historic features when it retrofitted the structures for dormitories. For example, it abutted firewalls and drop-ceilings to the wood trim and crown moldings, rather than disturb the features.
The buyer plans to keep and restore 231 Western Promenade for his own use. Historic features include tapestry walls and hand-painted wallpaper depicting scenes of gentlemen riding through town in their carriages.
Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
Tapestried walls are in excellent shape at Chisholm House.
The tapestry walls are in excellent condition, she said.
“The buyer is well versed in historic renovations, so he knows how to get everything restored properly,” she said.
The wallpaper will probably be more of challenge, being in less-pristine condition with problems such as water stains.
Other interesting details from bygone days include old call buttons to summon servants and skylights over the stairwells.
Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
The lot at 231 Western Promenade includes a 19th-century carriage house.
The dining room at 231 Western Prom has a coffered ceiling with hand-carved medallions on the trim. The staircases showcase hand-carved balusters and newel posts.
The land that came with the property made the deal even more appealing, she said.
The carriage house on Chadwick Street has been used simply for storage but will also undergo renovations that will include installation of infrastructure such as electrical rewiring and a new heating system.
There’s no cost estimate yet for the renovation, but it could be in the millions of dollars, she said.
“He’ll want to do everything perfectly within the historic context, then bring it into this century,” she said of the buyer.
112 West St.
The buyer has relisted 112 West St. for $1.995 million.
“As an owner/user he didn’t need all of them,” Ali Malone said. “He bought them as part of the package to be competitive.”
The goal is to find a similarly minded buyer who wants to restore it.
Interesting details at 112 West St. include an old steam laundry with giant sliding racks, pipes and heat boxes. The attic houses early water cisterns.
Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
Features at 112 West St. include the original dark-paneled library.
The house contains a library with dark wood bookshelves that have glass doors and secret panels. On the second floor is an old sewing room with built-in mirrors that unfold for dressmaking back in the day.
In general, the rooms are huge. A sunroom has a long pergola that extends out the back and the backyard has a brick fountain that can be seen through the house from the entryway.
The home was gifted to the original owner by her father as a wedding present, said Malone.
“The electric panels still have all the old labeling for the original children of the first family that owned it, so you can see where each person’ room was,” she said. “Then that family donated the property to Maine Medical Center. So my client is only the third owner of that house and only the first person to actually buy it. It’s a lot of fun to see.”
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