Downtown Portland, Maine may not only get a building designed by Safdie Architects, but two. The world architecture firm founded by Moshe Safdie proposed reimaginating an area of four hectares of open space with a retail pavilion and a 28 -storey hotel/residential tower that will be the highest building in the city and the state.
Safdie, revealing the integral design for the old area of Port Square in the city earlier this month, Safdie said that he and his team are aimed at designing a tower in a city of buildings mostly low in the concept of the building as a lighthouse.
“It is a lighthouse in the tradition of Portland lighthouses, those beautiful and beautiful structures coming out of the earth or outside the water that become icons of the landscape for a good purpose,” Safdie says in a statement.
The iconic beacon on top of the tower will incorporate curved wooden beams to create a friendly public space.
“The goal of the Balisa was to create articulation and lightness in the structure of the roof and the shading of the Sun for the Sky-Lobby,” said Sean Scensor, a senior partner in Safdie Architectts.
The design began in 2018 and will continue for several years in various projects. The construction of the tower and the retail pavilion is expected until next year or by 2030 once approved.
The Safdie project, along with another old Port Square development, is in the midst of an increase in tourist and business trips to Portland for the last decade, which has stimulated an increase in the hotel building.
)Old Port Square was born of this idea that we could fix what was released and improved with modern architecture that could also talk to where Portland, and Maine, said Tim Soley, President of the Portland project developer, East Brown Cow, in a statement.
Far inspired
The 1844.5 -feet tall 184.5 -ft building in the old Portland district is currently the highest building in the city. Inaugurated in 2023, Franklin Towers, a 16 -story public housing property, 175 feet operated by the Portland Housing Authority, was overcome after the Portland City Council granted the project a zoning modification to allow height.
The Safdie’s 380 -feet Mixed Tower proposal will not resign from variations, as the city updated its land use code last year to allow the construction of higher buildings.
The project will also have a transparent base 33 feet high with two lobbies and an interior/outdoor coffee. A 100 bedroom hotel will be housed at the top 10 stories above the lobby and 13 floors of one and two rooms units of condominiums will occupy the floors above. A vault wood and a glass pavilion will crown the tower as a “metaphor for the lighthouse of a lighthouse”. A public lobby and restaurant will be built on top of the slender building for panoramic views of the helmet bay and the new Hampshire white mountains.
At 55 Union St., a detailed wooden and glass pavilion will create a gateway to the western side of the old Port Square. The structure will include 8,000 square feet of detailed space on two levels joined by a sculptural scale. It will also have a wooden wooden canopy that resembles the wood and the glass pavilion in the mixed tower.
Safdie also hopes to preserve the historic maritime character of the old sea port of the Old Port with fishing pillars and 18th and 19th Century Brick Buildings.
Scensor says that using the tower as a development anchor, the team sought to “open the ground plane” to invite public activity. “We managed to raise the building in slim columns, opening the ground plane to light and air, access to pedestrians and creating a coffee shop with interior and exterior seats.”
For the designs on the facade, the Safdie team emulated the historical stone and brick facades “finely textured”, according to Scensor. They used screens in layers on the facade to create a detailed texture in the tower and incorporated stainless steel mesh for parking.
The Safdie team coordinated with Michael Bouche, a landscape architect and the Pentagram independent design group to integrate the two buildings with external public spaces.
The development blog will have the main retail trade, luxury hospitality, residences, food properties and drinks and the A Class A offices space.
Place restrictions
Located in a small average blockade found from the surrounding streets, the project will have “limited access and space for construction cranes and the staging of materials,” says Scensor.
The subsequent service and the loading areas are adjusted, as the project maximizes the pedestrian facade whenever possible. The team also works to secure the tower and The design of the wooden pavilion is cohesively linked to other elements of the project such as Extensive repavation and new public spaces.
“The challenge is to return a human scale to a mega block from the 1980’s, which currently lacks urban connection with the historic Port Old neighborhood,” says Scensor.
Along with the plans to build the two Safdie buildings, Old Port includes “multiple projects in various stages of design and completion,” says Soley, who added that his company hoped to invigorate the underused zone since they bought the property in 2009 and estimates that it would cost $ 15 million for redevelopment.
According to the city’s records, a preliminary request from the Safdie project was submitted in November 2024, but “it has not yet been approved or considered complete,” says Jessica Grondin, a city spokesman.
“We look forward to continuing dialogue with planning staff, planning board and community throughout the permit process,” says Soley.
