Westbrook’s riverside renaissance gets boost from $1M EPA cleanup at future site of apartments

WESTBROOK — For decades, the area around Dana Street, a short lane linking Main Street to the edge of the Presumpscot River, has been rundown, overgrown and inaccessible.
More recently, it has been a roadblock in the city’s efforts to revitalize its downtown, riverfront and historic mill districts.
Now, the Dana Street area is on the cusp of being transformed by an estimated $44.7 million, 110-unit, market-rate apartment complex with restaurant space and public riverfront access that city officials approved in April.
And the developer is getting a significant assist with $1 million in federal brownfield cleanup funding through the Greater Portland Council of Governments.
“I grew up in Westbrook. This has always been a blighted area,” Mayor David Morse said during a site walk last week. “This project will bring vibrancy to the area and continue to expand the riverwalk and downtown revitalization.”
The Dana Street Redevelopment Project is one of five projects in Greater Portland that GPCOG recently awarded a total of $3.9 million in brownfield grants or low-interest loans from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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GPCOG applies for and distributes the funding to projects that support housing and economic development; revitalize downtowns and village centers; and remediate contaminated sites to reduce health risks and return land to productive use.
Housing advocates issued a report in late 2023 saying that Maine needed to produce 84,000 new homes by 2030 to offset a lack of housing of all kinds.
FOUR OTHER PROJECTS
The other projects that received funding through GPCOG are:
55 new apartments (first phase of 173 affordable units overall), 70 E. Oxford St., Portland; $500,000 grant to Portland Housing Authority to remove asbestos materials from building demolition and hydrocarbon, metal and chemical contamination typical of urban soils.
60 new apartments (48 affordable, 12 market-rate) and expanded child care center, 331 Cumberland Ave., Portland; $300,000 low-interest loan and $400,000 grant to Youth & Family Outreach to remove asbestos materials from building demolition and urban contaminated soils.
92-room boutique hotel, 465 Congress St., Portland; $750,000 low-interest loan to Fathom Companies to remove asbestos-containing materials throughout the long-vacant Fidelity Trust Building.
255 new apartments (market rate), 125 Thompson’s Point Road, Portland; $1 million low-interest loan to Forefront Partners to remove contaminated soils typical of former industrial and railroad uses.
“These projects are so cost-prohibitive in the initial stages, this brownfield funding unlocks the development potential of properties that otherwise would continue to lie dormant,” said Paul Johnson, GPCOG’s economic and community development director.
Applicants cannot be responsible for the contamination they intend to remediate, Johnson said. Nonprofits that receive grants are reimbursed after contamination is removed. Loans to private developers are running at about 3% interest, he said.
UNLOCKING DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL
Matthew Welter, principal of Quaker Lane Associates in West Hartford, Connecticut, said the $1 million brownfields loan was a big help in financing the Dana Street project, although he requested $3 million.
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“It was an important funding mechanism in the overall capital structuring of the project,” Welter said in a phone interview. “It definitely helped to ease the pressure that projects typically face.”
Welter said the loan will be used to remove or cap soils contaminated with coal, ash, brick, glass, hydrocarbons and metals across the 3.4-acre site — work that was estimated to cost $3.6 million in his application to GPCOG.
Remediation will include demolition of the former American Journal building at 4 Dana St. and construction of two apartment buildings, parking lots and landscaped areas with vapor- and erosion-mitigating systems.
Demolition and construction was expected to start this month but has been pushed to early to mid-2026, in part because of planning and financing delays, Welter said.
Last week, city councilors decided to rename Dana Street to avoid confusion for emergency responders with Dana Court, another street in Westbrook. They settled on Kidder Lane to preserve a nod to the street’s namesake, Woodbury Kidder Dana, a prominent local industrialist who died in 1924.
Welter said his company will rename the project — which will include 76 one-bedroom units, 25 two-bedroom units and nine studios — before it starts marketing the apartments early next year.
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Asked if the riverfront apartments will offer high-end amenities and demand luxury rents, Welter said it’s also too early to say how much rents will cost and what amenities will be included. “They will be market rate,” he said.
‘VERY, VERY ATTRACTIVE’
Welter did say the five- and six-story buildings will be oriented along with river so about half of the units will have balconies and/or water views. The project also will include restaurant space with outside seating that has yet to be leased.
“Market rate along the river? It’s going to be very, very attractive,” said City Manager Jerre Bryant, who has overseen Westbrook’s revitalization strategy for more than 20 years.
Westbrook strives to produce a “good mix” of housing of all types for all income levels, about 20% of which has turned out to be affordable, said Jennie Poulin Franceschi, city planning director.
“We need all types of housing to stabilize the market in the region,” she said. “We’re getting a good balance.”
The Dana Street project follows the dam removal at Saccarappa Falls that brought migratory fish back to a cleaner river; the redevelopment of the historic Dana Warp Mill into office, manufacturing and retail space; and a variety of residential and commercial developments downtown.
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“The transformation over the last 10 years has been phenomenal,” said Johnson, of GPCOG. “The Dana Street project is a linchpin of that effort.”
The Dana Street project also coincides with the city’s plan to revitalize Saccarappa Park right next door and expand riverwalks on both sides of the Presumpscot, said Robyn Saunders, project manager with the city’s Economic & Community Development Department.
The city has received $4 million from the EPA to expand the riverwalk, with an additional $900,000 for the park project and $250,000 to improve public access at Mill Lane through the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development.
The goal is to connect with trails in Gorham and beyond, and to eventually to install a footbridge from the Dana Street project to Saccarappa Island, Saunders said.
All of the improvements aim to further reconnect people to the river that was a source of food and community for the Wabanaki who lived here long before European immigrants arrived.
“That is a key value of the city,” Franceschi said. “We now have a river that is inviting. It’s right in the heart of the city, and it’s just one of the reasons we want to be here.”