Mark your calendars for Build Maine 2026! June 2nd + 3rd in Skowhegan!
What is build Maine?
Build Maine brings together all people participating in the act of building our towns and cities. The builders, funders, elected officials, engineers, lawyers, planners, finance institutions, and rule-makers converge throughout the year to share best practices and aspirations for moving Maine forward within the political and economic climates of today.
Build Maine introduces cutting edge business practices and focused conversations with leaders in transportation planning, real estate development, and public service, demonstrating a breadth of knowledge we can apply locally.
Build Maine offers its diverse and engaging content to Mainers through a highly active social media presence, enriching workshops and events throughout the year, and, of course, the culminating experience - the annual Build Maine Conference.
Not from Maine? Living elsewhere? All are welcome at Build Maine events.
Please join our newsletter or follow us on Facebook or Twitter for the latest events and content.
Build Maine is co-hosted by the Maine Downtown Center, the Maine Municipal Association (MMA), and the Maine Real Estate & Development Association (MEREDA).
We hope you will join the conversation!
Join the State wide policy CONVERSATION!
In 2025, Build Maine and GrowSmart launched Policy Action 2025, a collaborative, open source process to craft legislative policy. Seven working groups brought forward 17 bills, with a number of these bills moving forward.
Bills range in focus from building stronger places, getting more housing built in the right place, making streets safer for everyone, protecting our working lands and open spaces, and helping our towns remain financially resilient. A full overview of bills and bill status can be found HERE.
How did it all start? Build Maine and GrowSmart Maine joined forces to shape state-level policy as part of an open and dynamic process involving over a hundred people from across the State. Policy Action began in Spring 2022 and then again in Spring 2024 with a series of brainstorming sessions about ways to help support municipal work and direct development to the right places. Both of these brainstorming efforts lead to working groups that advanced bills.
Sign up for our mailing list to receive ongoing updates and opportunities to get involved.
Explore the Maine PlaceCode Library
The PlaceCode is a zoning code library that was developed to help towns more effectively achieve local land use goals, and as an alternative to existing outdated zoning that promotes low density, costly sprawl development. The framework for the PlaceCode is based on local development patterns, and provides an accessible and easy to understand kit of parts that can be locally calibrated to produce development patterns that are more typical to Maine’s most loved places. The code library can help towns use zoning to build a stronger tax base, unlock housing in the right places, reposition commercial corridors to allow mixed-use neighborhood development, protect and enhance historic villages, direct development away from rural farm and forest lands, and more. The PlaceCode has been developed over the course of the past 15 years, with a number of towns adopting zoning standards from the library, including Newcastle, and parts of Scarborough, Windham, and North Yarmouth. Build Maine received a Housing Opportunity grant from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development to open source the PlaceCode. The PlaceCode library can he found HERE.
Interested in Sponsoring Build Maine?
Interested in sponsoring this year’s Build Maine Conference or want to get involved with year-round operations? Please visit the sponsor page or email us at connect@build-maine.com and we will be in touch!
Interested in learning more about municipal sponsorship from other Maine cities and towns? Check out our write up in Maine Town & City, the Magazine of the Maine Municipal Association!
Build Maine 2025 sponsors:
Build Maine is hosted by:
