Sun Life, Portland Foreside break ground on Portland waterfront office complex
Courtesy / SunLIfe
A rendering shows the planned Portland headquarters of Sun Life Financial and its subsidiary, FullScopeRMS.
Construction is underway on a 100,000-square-foot office complex that will bring group benefits company Sun Life Financial Inc. to Portland’s growing business district on the eastern waterfront.
Representatives of Sun Life (NYSE: SLF), developer Portland Foreside and public officials held a virtual groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday to celebrate the start of the building at 58 Fore St., on the former Portland Co. complex.
Sun Life has 500 employees at offices in Scarborough and South Portland, and will occupy about 77,000 square feet of the building. It’s expected to be complete in 2022.
The project, announced in September 2019, will ultimately also include dining, hospitality and entertainment venues, and a feature never before available to the city — direct access to the waterfront through scenic public park plazas.
Sun Life said it has adapted its plans for the space because of the pandemic.
"Based on what we've learned over the past nine months, we are evolving our approach to the future of work, and with it our vision for the use of our new state-of-the-art office space," Dan Fishbein, president of Sun Life U.S, said in a news release. "We are excited to see the new space begin to come together as construction moves forward.”
The company also said it has made commitments to work with a growing pool of workforce talent in Portland. The agreements include a recently announced partnership with Northeastern University's Roux Institute to train and recruit employees in data science, and apply these skills to actuarial sciences and other areas of the insurance industry.
"We are looking forward to working with local education partners to develop new talent, while also tapping into the Portland area's disability insurance cluster to add to our existing team," said Fishbein.
Casey Prentice, managing partner at Portland Foreside, said in the release, "Our vision for this area has been a long time coming, and we're thrilled to get underway and create a destination location for Portland residents and tourists alike. Having a major business presence and employer like Sun Life as our first resident shows the potential of this great location."
City Manager Jon Jennings added, "Portland continues to grow as a hub for business, drawing students and professionals with diverse backgrounds from all over the country. With a long-standing presence in Greater Portland, I'm excited to see Sun Life establishing a new office right in the heart of the city, supporting an area in which people will want to work, shop and live."
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