2024 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
wednesday, JUne 5
3:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Activating Upper Stories
Trisha Purdon | Director, Office of rural Prosperity John Egan | Genesis fund
Vacant upper floors of mixed-use main street buildings remain a challenge to repurpose, despite the ideal location for housing. Join this session and learn how to help unlock redevelopment potential in challenging upper floors, including knowing which building codes to use, where to find financing, and other tools available to drive more housing into your downtown.
Beer Garden
Join Build Maine for socializing and fun!
Held at the location of the future riverfront promenade, the festivities will take place outside, overlooking the Kennebec River. Enjoy food and drink (pay your own), see old friends and meet new friends, test your trivia skills, and chat with long lost friends and colleagues. Welcome to all! In the event of rain, join us under the tent in the parking lot of 185 Water Street.
THURSDAY, JUNE 6
8:00 am - 4:00 pm
Jake Bittle
Staff Writer | Grist
Over the next fifty years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest migration in our country’s history. In other words, they’ll be coming to Maine. Jake Bittle is a staff writer at Grist, where he covers climate change. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s, New York Magazine, The New Republic, and numerous other publications. He is the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Join us to learn more about the extent to which climate mitration will impact Maine, and why planning will become an increasingly necessary activity to protect what we love most about our State.
Tom Low
Director | Civic by Design
Maine has a finite amount of time to determine whether we will learn from America’s costly suburban mistakes, or continue to erode our treasured way of life. The choice between farms vs. highways, vast uninterupted timber forests vs. low density residential sprawl, NIMBYism in our downtowns vs. embracing development where we need it most, open roads vs. traffic choked arterials - these are all choices we will make, either through apathy and non-action or through intentional work to change our land use development systems. Tom will share inspiration and the steps we must take to develop in a way that Mainers will in fact love.
Highlights from Policy Action 2023
Nancy Smith, GrowSmart Maine | Vanessa Farr, Principle | Zoe Miller, Moving Maine Network | Josh Caldwell, Natural Resources Council of Maine | Tara Kelly, Maine Preservation
Build Maine and GrowSmart Maine innovated a new process for engaging a broad statewide conversation, best described as public policy crowdsourcing. Learn about work that has been ongoing since 2019, involving hundreds of people across the state, and the big policy moves from the 2023 session to improve built outcomes while reducing demand for development on rural lands.
State Policy + Funding Updates
Steve Landry, MaineDOT | Learn about the process for quickly and inexpensively improving street safety through a new DOT process centered around quick build projects. Also hear updates to the speed setting policy to help reduce dangerous vehicle speeds on local roads.
Sarah Curran, Deputy Director, Climate Planning and Community Partnerships, with the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future | For the past 3 years, the Governor’s Ofifce of Policy, Innovation, and the Future has been providing Community Resilience Partnership grants for local, municipal-lead projects that help advance climate-friendly policies. Hear highlights from this work and ongoing opportunities for project funding.
Hilary Gove, DECD + Benjamin Averill, Housing Opportunity Program Coordinators, DECD | Learn about funding available to service providers and municipalities to assist with ordinance development and public engagement to increase housing opportunities in Maine communities.
Mark Wiesendanger, MaineHousing | Visit the MaineHousing exhibit booth to hear more about housing programs and the state-wide effort to close the gap on the 84,000 new homes required to meet current and future demand.
LUNCH Sessions
11:30 am - 1:30 pm
Tour: Spinning Mill Development
Tour departs at 11:45 am from the front entrance of the Spinning Mill, 7 Island Avenue. Recommend pre-ordering brown bag lunch.
Join us for a tour of the Spinning Mill, which was the vacant undeveloped site of the 2022 Build Maine conference. Work is almost completed to transform the mill into apartments and lodging. Learn about the financing assembled to pull off this project and generate significant value for downtown Skowhegan.
Tour: Maine Grains Gristmill Tour
Tour departs at 12:30 pm from Miller’s Table at Maine Grains, 42 Court St. Pay your own lunch available at the Miller’s Table Cafe.
Maine Grains is housed in the historic former Somerset County Jail building, which is also the home of the Miller’s Table Café, Crooked Face Creamery, Happyknits yarn shop, WXNZ community radio & the weekly Skowhegan Farmer’s Market. The mill has been an engine of entrepreneurship and resides in the heart of historic downtown Skowhegan. The tour will share the unique history of Maine Grains, the process of transforming a jail into a mill, how stone milled flour is made, and what they are hoping to accomplish in the years to come.
Bus / Walking Tour: Industry + Housing in Madison
Bus departs from 185 Water Street at 11:30 am. Participants must register and order bag lunch.
Participants will be taken via bus to Madison. A moderated walking tour of Timber HP will showcase wood fiber insulation products in production at the re-purposed downtown mill. The bus will then take participants to 55 Weston, the site of a MaineHousing Affordable Rural Rental housing project.
Bus / Walking Tour: Big Projects in Waterville
Bus departs from 185 Water Street at 11:30 am. Participants must register and order bag lunch.
Participants will be taken via bus to Waterville. A moderated walking tour will showcase the results of the recent two-way street conversation, and its positive impacts on downtown businesses. The tour will also take participants to the sites of transformative downtown projects in the planning phases.
POLICY + LUNCH
Lunch will be catered for all participants. Must register for this session.
This lunchtime session will give participants an opportunity to review the outcomes of 2023, decide what additional work may be needed to further advance 2023 goals, and brainstorm any new initiatives or ideas that should be pursued in 2025, informing working groups that will meet this summer / fall to draft bills.
Bringing Passenger Rail to Inland Maine
Efforts to expand passenger rail into Lewiston, Waterville, Augusta, Bangor, and other inland communities have faced resistance, pointing to Maine’s small population as the reason. As more people move to Maine to escape climate issues in other states, suburban development and related traffic impacts continue to erode our regional road system. Maine has an opportunity to think bigger about the future of transit, and the greater return on investment associated with transit-oriented investment in exisiting community centers, the beneifts of locating housing near jobs, and the potential for inter-city rail to support regional and local micro-mobility. Join a conversation with transportation experts and local leaders to explore how rail travel can once again become a viable transportation option in Maine.
Katharine Burgess
Vice President, Land Use & Development | SmartGrowth America, Washington D.C.
Communities in Maine and across the U.S. are facing both a housing access crisis and a climate crisis. New housing cannot be built quickly enough, and existing supply is under threat from more frequent and intense climate events. How can Maine communities prioritize building in locations less susceptible to harm and how can historic communities, many of which are based around charming but vulnerable settings such as waterfronts, realistically adapt? Hear from Katharine on strategies to integrate resilience and pro-housing approaches, as well as SmartGrowth America’s efforts to break down silos between climate and housing policy at the Federal level.
Small Scale Development 101
John Egan, Genesis Fund | Mark Primeau, Genesis Fund | Special Guest Appearance: Mark Wiesendanger, MaineHousing
This session will provide future small scale developers with tools for taking on a first project. Staff from Genesis will explain their contract with MaineHousing to provide support, advice, and technical assistance to small-scale entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, municipalities, land owners, and builders. They will also outline the development process, the importance of sequence, and how to assemble the right team. An overview of rural affordable housing and home ownership funding opportunities will also be shared with participants.
Matt Wagner
Chief Program Officer, Main Street America, Washington, DC
Local businesses are the heart and soul of Main Street, serving as hubs for social connection and economic growth. Learn about the innovative ways that Main Street businesses can overcome the adversity of the on-line economy, whether it’s starting a new enterprise or keeping a multi-generation business alive. This session will also explore how high growth businesses and changemakers can be empoowered to start businesses, creating wealth for their families and improving outcomes for their communities. This session will highlight work being done in communities across the U.S. to reforucus on quality of place and break down barriers to entrepreneurial opportunity in communities that have been left behind by the global economy.
Breaking from the Suburban Era
Moderator: Representative Traci Gere |
Sarah Curran, Deputy Director, Climate Planning and Community Partnerships, with the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future | Jacob Hemmerick, Vermont Department of Housing & Community Development | George Reagan, Director, Community Engagement, New Hampshire Housing
Northern New England states are making big moves to support a place-based approach to investment, strengthen state and regional support for local planning, and coordinate state funding in service of local housing and development projects. Learn about new programs to provide a state-level path to project approvals in New Hampshire, small-scale building types in Vermont, and realignment of programs to support planning by Maine communities.
