Port Property's 52 Hanover St. development starts construction

Courtesy / Port Property Management The development, at 52 Hanover St. in Portland, will feature 171 apartment, parking and retail space.

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By Jessica Hall

Construction has begun on Port Property Management’s $72 million development of 52 Hanover St. in Portland, with occupancy planned for the spring or summer of 2023.

The 171-apartment building, which will also have 6,500 square feet of retail space, is the last piece of the six Portland public works department properties listed by the city in April 2017 to be redeveloped.

“We’ve demo’d the old public works building and we’re doing site work. Construction will be about a 16- to 18-month process,” said developer and Port Property Management co-owner Tom Watson.

“It’s going to be great. It’s an ambitious, beautiful project. There’s apartments, there’s retail, there’s a parking garage. It will bring a lot of life to West Bayside,” Watson said.

Usually, Port Property does its own construction, and it’s tackled a number of large projects. But for this space, it has hired the general contracting firm the Penobscot General Contractors of Rockport as its construction firm.

The building, designed by Massachusetts architects Cube3, will feature 171 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units with 10% being workforce housing.

Other features of the building include parking for residents on the lower two floors. A grassy courtyard will have plantings, fire pits and a water feature. There will also be a bicycle storage and repair area for residents, two lobbies, one with a mezzanine. Outside, a “living wall” of plants will liven up the exterior garage wall along Parris Street.

The luxury mixed-use complex does not yet have a name.

The property will be Port Property’s largest residential project so far.

Other projects include redeveloping the nearby former Bayside Village redevelopment into 196 units of workforce housing, the Riverdam mill redevelopment in Biddeford and the Saco-Lowell mill, also in Biddeford.

Port Property Management also previously developed another of Portland’s public works properties at 82 Hanover St. into a mixed-use building that includes restaurants, bars and office space.