Portsmouth in 2024: Development surge in North End, Route 1 corridor

PORTSMOUTH — Development in the city’s Route 1 corridor and the North End — especially along the North Mill Pond — is expected to continue to accelerate in 2024, according to Peter Britz, the city’s director of planning and sustainability.

During a wide-ranging interview in his office overlooking South Mill Pond, Britz said the pace of development in Portsmouth remains intense.

“It hasn’t slowed down, and it never seems to slow down, it’s amazing how it goes,” Britz said. “It almost seems like projects are getting bigger rather than smaller.”

Britz believes a number of developments along the North Mill Pond could move forward in the new year after court decisions cleared the way for the projects.

“In the last few years there’s been a lot (of housing) approved, a lot’s being built, and a lot is going to be built,” Britz said. “There’s several cases that were tied up in court, 105 Bartlett, Raynes Avenue, 53 Green, are all out of court, so they’re all going to be ramping up.”

North End projects in Portsmouth

The 53 Green St. project calls for demolishing an existing building on site near the North Mill Pond and replacing it with a five-story, mixed-use development featuring 48 market rate residential units on the top four floors.

The mixed-use building will feature 1,898 square feet of commercial space on the first floor, 97 parking spaces and 22,095 square feet of community space along the North Mill Pond.

The community space behind the development will connect to a new park behind the adjacent AC Hotel.

The 105 Bartlett St. project calls for building 152 apartments in three buildings along the North Mill Pond.

The development, which is called the Residence at Islington Creek, will include a half-acre public park along the North Mill Pond and donated rights to the city for about three-quarters of a mile of the long-planned North Mill Pond Trail and Greenway.

The Raynes Avenue project, which is being developed by XSS Hotels and Procon, calls for demolishing three existing buildings on site along Maplewood and Raynes avenues and replacing them with a hotel and an apartment project.

The major redevelopment features a five-story, 124-room hotel and a four-story mixed-use building, which will include a penthouse, 32 market-rate apartments on the upper floors and commercial uses on the ground floor.

“We’re going to see quite a bit of development along the North Mill Pond in the next year or two with those projects in particular,” Britz said.

New homes off Lafayette Road

He also predicted that housing development will continue to surge in what he describes as the city’s “Lafayette Road corridor,” where a number of projects have already been approved and built in the last few years.

There’s also several more projects proposed in the city’s gateway districts, which allows developers to repurpose non-housing sites along Route 1 and turn them into mixed-use developments that include housing, Britz said.

“There’s a lot of zoning in the Lafayette Corridor there called office/research which was meant for hospitals and offices,” Britz said. “The gateway (zoning) opens it up a lot to more of a mixed-use development, which allows housing and more housing density.”

“It just creates flexibility,” he added.

Britz stated that work on the five-story, 95-unit condominium development — which will be built at the former Cinemagic movie theater site off Route 1 — is expected to start soon.

Nineteen of those 95 units will be sold at work-force housing prices. The development is located in the Portsmouth Green off Lafayette Road.

More projects on the way

Britz also pointed to a number of projects proposed for the corridor that are going through the land-use review board process and are slated to bring even more housing to the area.

Developers of a project hoping to create 72 market-rate apartments in three buildings at the former WHEB radio station site recently received recommended approval from the city’s Technical Advisory Committee.

The redevelopment project at 815 Lafayette Road is also proposed to include open community space along Sagamore Creek.

In addition, developer Mark McNabb has proposed putting two additions on the Tour restaurant building on Lafayette Road, creating 72 apartments.

The site, located in a shopping plaza area, was formerly home to the Tuscan Kitchen and the Jerry Lewis Cinemas.

Twenty percent of the proposed apartments will be rented at work-force housing rates, McNabb has said.

Creating housing for workers

Britz acknowledged that getting private developers to create affordable housing has been “tough.”

“We haven’t gotten a ton of affordable housing brought in, but we’ve gotten a lot of housing,” he said.

It’s possible, he said, that additional zoning changes could be made to areas off Lafayette Road to “incentivize developers” to provide “more affordable or work-force housing.”

“We’d all like to see more of a mix because there’s a lot of higher end housing that’s gone up recently,” Britz said. “There’s some smaller, I guess is the best way to describe it, not necessarily affordable but smaller.”

He noted that one of the things the city’s Housing Navigator, Howard Snyder, is working on is “looking at the economics” of creating below market rate housing.

“What can a developer afford to do a project with. … Then we can provide these incentives and they might take advantage of it, versus not exactly knowing what they can take advantage of,” Britz said.

Understanding the market better will help planners decide what to propose “before we change the zoning to provide sort of that mix of housing we’re looking for right now,” Britz said.

He said some developers, like McNabb, are “taking matters into their own hands” to create housing that their employees can afford.

“Because the people that have these businesses in town don’t have the ability to house their workers, or their workers can’t find a place to live,” Britz said. “And it used to be you live in Rochester or Somersworth, but even that is becoming really expensive.”

“It’s not like there’s any cheap places to live around here anymore,” Britz added.

There too remains “a big push from the City Council to create more housing, housing affordability and more housing just in general,” he said.

The City Council earlier this year proposed building a below market rate housing project at the former Sherburne School, but delayed the initiative after receiving pushback from the adjacent Pannaway Manor neighborhood.

He believes the council will again try to work with the Housing Authority on a project or projects to create housing for workers.

“I think we’re going to be looking at that, if we can get the community support, they’ll be a big process, a community process,” he said.

“Everyone I talk to understands the problem, people like to go out to dinner and like to do things. Most people understand that work-force housing doesn’t mean like tenements or something, it means people who are living in the community who need a place to live, firemen, policemen, restaurant workers, they all need a place to live.”

The future of Market Square, McIntyre and more

Britz also weighed in on a number of other topics during the recent interview.

For example, he pointed to the long-awaited Market Square master plan project.

Britz said the work on the initiative, which is slated to start early in 2024 with public input sessions, is aimed at examining the future of the city’s iconic Market Square.

“What does the community see that they like, what do they want to change, maybe come up with three different visions … and then present those to the public,” Britz said.

The discussions could focus in part on“does the community want to shut down big parts of the road network, can we, should we, do we want to, how much does it cost, all those things.”

Britz said when developer Anthony DiLorenzo decides how he wants to redevelop the former McIntyre federal building, that will become potentially the biggest project in the city.

“That’s a huge project obviously at some point, it’s such a big building, and it’s going to make a big impact on the downtown,” Britz said.

So far DiLorenzo has not shared how he wants to redevelop the 2.1-acre property at 80 Daniel St. in the heart of downtown.

Seacoast home buyers 'live the dream': Here are 10 highest-priced home sales of 2023

New ways around Portsmouth

Planning staff are also looking to begin work on updating the city’s bike-pedestrian master plan, Britz said.

“There’s been a lot of interest in how can we do more accommodations for bicycles and pedestrians,” he noted.

The initiative comes as the long discussed rail trail project is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2024.

The project, officially known as the New Hampshire Seacoast Greenway, will be a 17-mile network of rail trails and bikeways connecting the communities of Seabrook, Hampton Falls, Hampton, North Hampton, Rye, Greenland and Portsmouth. It's a small part of the larger East Coast Greenway project, which is intended to connect off-road trails from Maine to the Florida Keys.

Britz said the project “is going to be a huge change in terms of getting around Portsmouth.”

“This has the opportunity to really open up networks of pedestrian and bike networks throughout the city,” Britz said. “Getting people across the city in different ways is going to be a real possibility.”

Much of it is in the woods, but they’ll be different tie-in locations, including at the new skatepark, downtown, the hospital and in city neighborhoods, he said.

“You’ll be able to walk through the city on that trail, not tomorrow, but eventually,” Britz said. “That’s the vision.”

Britz also spoke about the efforts to address sustainability issues, which was signified by renaming the department.

Instead of the Planning Department, it’s now the Planning and Sustainability Department.

The name change was aimed at “more formalizing the role of sustainability,” he said.

“It makes it more visible that we do more than just development,” Britz said. “To that end, we have a climate action plan right now that’s under way, we have a whole list of strategies we brought out to the public and we’re trying to get them to weigh in on those.

“This is the first step into the mitigation, how do we reduce the impacts of climate change going forward?” he said.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth NH 2024 development surge in North End, Route 1 corridor