The Portland planning board has greenlit a new development of more than 150 condos and apartments on Congress Street near the jetport.
The project includes 130 one, two and three bedroom condos, plus 26 attached accessory dwelling units that the owners can rent out or use for their own families.
Half of the condos will be sold at market rates. The development group, GreenMars Real Estate, said the other half will be considered affordable to those earning 80% of area median income and 100% area median income, or $72,380 and $90,860, respectively, for one-person households in Portland.
"The median sales price in Portland now is around $650,000," said developer Nate Green. "If you take the average price of all the units for sale, it's about 50% of that price. We're really just trying to bring back the starter home for people in Portland."
The goal, the developers said, is to build "starter" homes and fill a gap in Portland's tight housing market that has priced out many aspiring first-time homebuyers. The project may be among the first to the successfully conform to Portland's inclusionary zoning policies, which require that one-quarter of units in a development meet certain income requirements, without relying on major subsidies.
The developers acknowledged, however, that they may return to the planning board to ask for revisions to the project if Portland proceeds with changes to the city's inclusionary zoning policies.
A handful of Portland residents told planning board members Tuesday night that they supported the project and said they believed the development was a creative way to add more housing that's affordable to working people in the city.
The developers believe it is the first large-scale project to take advantage of Maine's density and accessory dwelling unit changes that lawmakers approved a few years ago.
