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Maine cities and towns will soon have a state agency they can turn to for help redeveloping vacant properties. First, those running the new “land bank” need to settle on a mission.
The Maine Redevelopment Land Bank Authority was established by lawmakers in April 2022 to help municipal planners and governments redevelop vacant properties, putting Maine among 21 other states to set up such a program at the state level.
Gov. Janet Mills appointed nine commissioners from a variety of backgrounds to lead the new group earlier this year. They met for the first time in person last week and split on a couple of issues, including whether the land bank should look to redevelop vacant single-family homes or only narrow its focus to industrial and commercial properties that would serve more people.
“I think we’re leaning toward that we’re not going to get involved in single-family homes, because it just doesn’t impact enough people,” said Commissioner Laura Burden, a broker with Portland-based Beacon Realty. “We’re trying to make a much bigger impact on a town and their economic engine, and that’ll be more equitable for the people in the state.”
The commission is addressing a deepening problem in Maine, where the number of homes sitting vacant because of age, disrepair or foreclosure has increased by 5,000 since 2011, a landmark state housing report found in October. While redeveloping single-family homes will be crucial in producing needed housing, it is also difficult for cities to administer one by one.
Other commissioners said they want the land bank to remain open to redeveloping single-family residences. While some municipalities like Biddeford or Rumford have thousands of square feet of mill or other industrial space that could be taken over and redeveloped by the land bank, vacant properties in other towns often tend to be single-family homes.
“I think it would be foolish of a land bank to overlook some communities because we’re kind of setting our sights on something different that maybe only serves some communities,” said Commissioner Alexa Plotkin, a Biddeford planning board member and policy analyst at the University of Southern Maine.
The new agency will be a relatively small one to start. While it has sweeping powers including the ability to file lawsuits, invoke eminent domain, issue bonds and apply for federal and state funding, it will only have an estimated budget of around $1.8 million per year coming from fees on the disposal of construction and demolition debris in state landfills.
The discussion over the new group’s mission will keep going and be guided by discussions with municipal planners and by the commission’s new executive director, said Lee Jay Feldman, the new chair of the commission who works at the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission. Applications for the director position only just opened.
For Rep. Melanie Sachs, D-Freeport, who sponsored the law, there’s nothing in it that precludes the authority from helping cities and towns redevelop single-family residences.
“It’s really up to the municipalities,” Sachs said. “So if they have an industrial site that they would like help with, then they should approach the land bank. If it’s a smaller home property that they just don’t know what to do with, then they definitely should talk about that, too.”
Another point of discussion among the commissioners is how the agency should be finding vacant properties to target for redevelopment. Feldman and Ian Houseal, a commissioner who serves as Sanford’s director of community development, said that the agency should be “proactive” and come up with its own list of properties.
Other commissioners, like Burden and Plotkin, thought that it would be more wise to let communities alert the land bank to vacant properties instead.
“Some of us know a lot about some areas, but we don’t know enough,” Burden said. “The towns know what they need, what’s wrong, what they need help with and what they’re not able to achieve on their own.”
Commissioners agreed on a lot more than they differed on. Offering municipalities technical assistance in redeveloping properties that are vacant for complex legal reasons was universally understood to be a primary goal of the agency, and so was leveraging state and federal funding. It may function in a utility role for the early part of its existence.
“We built this statute to reflect the needs of Maine, to respect home rule and to be able to leverage resources that communities can take advantage of,” Sachs said.