Landry/French snags big contract with WEX expansion

Courtesy / Crossroads Holdings LLC and WEX At The Downs mixed-use development in Scarborough, WEX will build a new employment center that will consolidate six South Portland offices into one new location.

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By Peter Van Allen

Landry/French Construction of Scarborough will manage construction of WEX Inc.’s $50 million operations center, planned for The Downs at Scarborough.

The contractor, which will celebrate 10 years in business in July, is expected to break ground this spring.

The Downs is about 7 miles from Landry/French headquarters. Elsewhere in town, it is building the Scarborough Public Works building. Construction of WEX’s headquarters on the Portland waterfront, which opened in January 2019, was overseen by Pittsfield-based Cianbro (which itself is busy in Portland with construction of the 100 Fore St. mixed-use building and the Hilton Canopy Hotel on Commercial Street).

In Portland, Landry/French has been hired to build an outpatient clinic for the Department of Veterans Affairs on West Commercial Street. It will break ground in March.

Meantime, Bowman Constructors, which is based in Newport, has a couple of big projects underway.

In Caribou, Bowman is building a $50 million school for Kindergarten through 8th grade. It will consolidate three existing schools when it opens in 2021.

In Bangor, Bowman is renovating 1 Merchant Plaza for client Sky Villa LLC. The building will house CES when it moves from Brewer. Elsewhere there, it is building an addition for the Bangor Humane Society.

Benchmark Construction, which is based in Westbrook, is busy around the state. It is building a 61-unit site for Robert L. Harnois Apartments in Westbrook. At Blueberry Commons in Falmouth, it is adding the Oceanview Fitness Center. In Machias, at 31 Main St., it is building the new headquarters for Machias Savings Bank.

Maine’s high and low home prices

Maine is coming off a hot year for residential real estate sales. Prices kept going up and inventory was tight. There were bidding wars, which led to “broken-hearted buyers and happy sellers,” Dava Davin, CEO and founder of Portside Real Estate, said at the recent MEREDA conference. The median home price hit a record $225,000 last year, though the two hottest counties were Cumberland and York. Those counties accounted for 40% of all home sales last year. The median home price was $312,000, versus $169,000 for the other 14 counties. Homes spent an average of 15 days on the market. About a quarter of the buyers were from out of state, with the top five states being Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Florida, New York and California.

My favorite anecdote from Davin concerned the extreme of the Maine market in 2019. The highest price house, a 10-bedroom oceanside estate in Ogunquit that offered “casual seaside living,” sold for $8 million. At the other end, a 576-square-foot cottage in Sebago sold for $12,000.

“Both were all-cash deals,” she said.

CEO ‘harnessing the voices of others’

You might remember that Kevin Hancock, CEO of Hancock Lumber, had a book a few years ago that talked about his experience battling a rare speech disorder and how he came to grips with it, “Finding Center in the Land of Crazy Horse.” On Feb. 25, he will have another book coming out, “The Seventh Power: One CEO’s Journey into the Business of Shared Leadership.” In it he talks about how the affliction changed his leadership style, “harnessing the voices of others.”