Courtesy / Two International Group, Market Square Architects
The five-story, 107-unit apartment building will include 11 affordable housing units.
January 29, 2024
NH developer of Kittery’s Hampton Inn has another project coming, next door
Courtesy / Two International Group, Market Square Architects
The four-story, 119-room hotel was designed to be “modernist” with the use of local materials.
The Kittery Planning Board approved a preliminary site plan earlier this month for the phased development of a hotel, apartment complex and commercial building along the town's busy Route 1 corridor.
The proposed development, at 283 U.S. Route 1, still needs construction permits.
The project is led by Two International Group of Portsmouth, N.H. The developer, formed in 1997, has a portfolio of nearly 1 million square feet of commercial space. That includes 16 projects in Portsmouth as well as a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel, next door to the site of the new project. The Hampton Inn was completed in 2019.
The project includes redeveloping existing commercial retail facilities into a five-story, 107-unit housing complex building to the rear of the site, a four-story, 119-room hotel along Route 1 and a 6,000-square-foot commercial building intended for a restaurant building at the corner of Route 1 and Wilson Road. There would also be on-site improvements including driveways, sidewalks, access improvements, stormwater management, lighting, landscaping, utilities and a dog park.
At the board’s Jan. 11 meeting, the project’s architect, Robert Harbeson, founder and partner at Market Square Architects in Portsmouth and Austin, Texas, said that based on input from the board at previous meetings, modifications were made to the aesthetics of the hotel and the apartment building.
The hotel will have a modernist look using local materials such as wood and brick. The apartment building was refined with the addition of Juliette balconies, a raised tower over the main entry, and parapets bumped out to bookend the building, with the goal of creating a modulated rather than monolithic exterior.
The single parcel contains three existing strip retail buildings and paved parking.
The location is a corner lot near Interstate 95, which runs parallel to Route 1. The property abuts the Kittery Trading Post and other commercial outlet buildings.
Since planning board reviews last fall, the size of the commercial area was reduced from 10,000 square feet to 6,000 square feet and the developer confirmed that it will seek a restaurant as a tenant for the commercial space.
The apartment building will include 11 units of affordable housing, determined by a calculation of 80% of regional annual median income, according to planning documents. The affordable units will be dispersed throughout the apartment to prevent segregation based on income.
The board didn’t require approximate rental rates. However, a note by town staff noted that, based on Maine Housing income eligibility limit worksheets, the maximum gross rent for a single bedroom in Kittery tied at 80% AMI would be $1,775, and for a two-bedroom would be $2,130, before deduction of utility costs.
The project will likely be completed in phases, with the likely first phase being the hotel followed by the apartment building and finally the restaurant, according to applicant documents. The hotel and apartment building construction could overlap, which would mean most of the site improvements would be constructed during the same mobilization.
The project comes on the heels of another hotel in development. The board approved plans in December for the Foreside Inn, a boutique hotel with 24 rooms that will involve the redevelopment of a 19th-century building and an adjacent lot at 27 and 29 Wentworth St. by Madbury Real Estate Ventures.
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