Special Projects: When the Challenge Doesn’t Fit the Mold
Some redevelopment challenges have a clear solution. Others require us to build one.
Maine communities regularly encounter properties, opportunities, and barriers that do not fit neatly within a traditional program or funding source. A promising redevelopment concept may lack an organization capable of moving it forward. An unusual ownership structure may require a new kind of partnership. A recurring challenge affecting communities across Maine may call for an entirely new approach.
Maine Redevelopment’s Special Projects program exists for those opportunities.
Special Projects is our innovation and problem-solving arm—a flexible space where we can bring together public purpose, technical expertise, partnerships, and an entrepreneurial approach to tackle redevelopment challenges that do not have an obvious solution.
Test. Learn. Refine. Scale.
Redevelopment does not always come with a roadmap.
Special Projects gives Maine Redevelopment the ability to explore new approaches in real places, alongside the communities and partners who understand the challenge best. Rather than waiting for a perfect solution to emerge, we can develop an idea, test it through a targeted pilot, learn from the results, and refine the model. When something works, we want to understand why it worked, and whether it can work somewhere else.
Depending on the opportunity, a Special Project might involve:
- Pilot programs and demonstration projects — testing new approaches to recurring redevelopment challenges.
- Innovative partnerships — developing new ways for municipalities, nonprofits, private organizations, regional partners, and others to work together.
- Surplus property reuse — exploring replicable approaches for returning obsolete or underutilized public and institutional properties to productive use.
- New redevelopment entities or structures — helping communities and regions explore organizational models that can create additional local redevelopment capacity.
- Creative ownership and stewardship models — testing partnerships that can support adaptive reuse and the long-term stewardship of important properties.
- Strategic property intervention — exploring tools that can resolve unusual ownership, title, site-control, or other barriers when conventional approaches have stalled.
- New financing and capitalization approaches — identifying creative ways to assemble the resources necessary to move promising projects forward.
Not every pilot will become a permanent program. That is intentional. Special Projects allows Maine Redevelopment to learn through action while managing risk thoughtfully and focusing on approaches with the potential for broader impact.
Filling the Gaps
Maine has tremendous redevelopment expertise spread across municipalities, regional organizations, state agencies, nonprofits, financial institutions, developers, and technical professionals.
But even with that expertise, gaps remain.
Sometimes everyone agrees that a project should happen, but no organization is positioned to take the next step. Sometimes a community has identified an opportunity, but the traditional market is not ready to respond. Sometimes existing programs can solve most, but not all, of the problem. Maine Redevelopment can step into those spaces.
Our role is not to replace the public, nonprofit, or private partners already doing this work. It is to identify what is missing and determine whether our flexibility, statutory tools, statewide perspective, or convening capacity can help close the gap.
Where Public Purpose Meets an Entrepreneurial Approach
Many of Maine’s most difficult redevelopment challenges exist in the space between what government traditionally does and what the private market can reasonably undertake.
Special Projects allows Maine Redevelopment to operate effectively in that space. We can approach a problem with the public purpose and accountability expected of a statewide authority while bringing the flexibility, creativity, urgency, and problem-solving mindset often associated with the private sector.
That combination allows us to ask a different question.
Instead of “Which existing program does this fit into?” we can ask: “What would it take to make this work?”
Then we can bring together the people, tools, resources, and partnerships necessary to explore the answer.
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Let’s Get Properties Back to Work
We’re all about the “re”—rethink, restart, reimagine, renew. Whether you have a potential project or want to be a prospective partner in the work, we’re excited to talk with you.