Earlier this evening, the Portland planning board voted unanimously to approve Maine Medical Center’s second site plan application as part of its ongoing expansion and moderinization plan. The garage will contain 2,450 parking spots within a short distance of the Bramhall campus, consolidating numerous Maine Medical Center parking facilities into one convenient and safe location.
Jeff Sanders, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of MMC gave a brief overview of the project in which he reminded the room full of executives that this project is being done in three phases. It was stated that Portland Ship Yard will be used as needed to stage material. It’s expected that 25 trucks a day will be needed. The construction schedule will be from 7:00 am – 6:00 pm, Monday-Friday beginning in October or November 2018. (No mention of weekend working hours was discussed.) A comprehensive TDM program was outlined by a MMC staff member, a requirement of the planning board. Vice Chair, Brandon Mazur, chaired the meeting.
The new garage will be well lit, with a 24/7 security presence and the latest technology to make accessing parking quick and easy. In addition, the garage will have a number of charging stations available for electric vehicles.
Construction begins this fall and is expected to be in use by the end of 2019. Following that, the completion of the new garage, MMC will demolish the old staff garage. Next, MMC will develop a new medical building in that space featuring modern single-bed patient rooms and procedure rooms centered on enabling modern cardiac care.
MMC expects to file the site plan application for the Congress Street medical tower within the next month.
Several concerns were expressed by neighbors of MMC this evening – one women saying she was not happy about the “overtake” of the neighborhood by the hospital.
note: In the past on large projects,some residents have not been happy about such an early am start time due to the noise from construction and how dust from the demolishment will be controlled. These issues did not come up this evening.)