MCDP and Backyard ADUs are bringing affordable homeownership within reach at Dougherty Commons.

MaineBiz recently featured an article on Dougherty Commons, our new affordable condominium development in Portland. You can read the full piece here: In Portland, affordable home ownership taking shape at Dougherty Commons.

In a stunning display of innovation and efficiency, crews recently assembled an entire condo building—four three-bedroom units—on Portland’s Congress Street in just one day. This milestone for Dougherty Condos, located at Park Avenue and Congress Street, demonstrates how modular construction can meaningfully expedite homebuilding in Maine’s tight housing market.
Every condo arrived in giant factory-built sections, complete with kitchens, bathrooms, fixtures, cabinets, and countertops—much like putting together a car, but for houses. It cuts down construction time and protects workers from cold weather delays, fewer mistakes, and unpredictable jobsite conditions.
I often liken traditional onsite construction to “building a car in your driveway.” Modular building flips that script—now you build efficiency in the factory, then quickly assemble it at the site. This model aligns perfectly with Maine’s goals: more housing, built smarter and faster, without sacrificing quality or craftsmanship.
After the day’s big installation, crews will next focus on finishing touches like roofing and siding over the next few weeks.
At Maine Cooperative Development Partners, we see how this approach can power affordable, durable housing solutions across communities. With modular methods, we can scale timely construction, support workers year-round, and deliver homes that work harder—without wasting time or resources.

When you’re considering your next move—literally—deciding whether to rent or buy is more than just a financial choice. It’s about your lifestyle, your flexibility, and your long-term plans. At Maine Cooperative Development Partners, we believe this decision deserves clarity and confidence.

When Buying Makes Sense
Buying can be a powerful way to build equity, stabilize housing costs, and shape your living space over time. It often works best when:

• You plan to stay in the home for at least 3–5 years, which helps offset upfront costs like down payments, closing fees, and maintenance responsibilities.
• You have a solid financial foundation and steady income, sufficient down payment saved, and manageable debt levels.
• You value growing your home base through ownership, controlling your space visually, and investing in a long-term asset.
  

When Renting May Be Smarter
Renting often offers more flexibility and affordability—especially when:

• You’re unsure of your long-term location or prefer the option to move easily.
• Your short-term finances are tight, or monthly buying costs (mortgage, taxes, insurance, upkeep) significantly exceed local rents.

Check the Numbers Yourself
Every situation is different. That’s why I recommend using the NerdWallet Rent vs Buy Calculator. Enter your rent, home price, down payment, and tax details—then compare the short- and long-term costs to see when you might break even. 

Bottom Line
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. But if you're financially stable, planning to stay put, and focused on building future value, buying could be the right path. If you need flexibility, lower upfront costs, or you're still saving up, renting might wisely serve you now. Use the calculator above to see which option makes sense for you.

At Maine Cooperative Development Partners, we’re thrilled to be working with Backyard ADUs to build our condos at Dougherty Commons. Their innovative, modular approach to housing is helping us meet Maine’s urgent need for quality, attainable homes—faster and smarter.
Backyard ADUs recently reached an exciting milestone: they’ve now placed their 100th home here in Maine! It’s an incredible achievement that speaks to their dedication, creativity, and the hardworking team that is literally building solutions to our housing crisis box by box.
You can see the celebration and learn more about their work in this WMTW news spot: Made in Maine: Backyard ADUs delivers solution to Maine’s housing crisis, box by box.
At Dougherty Commons, we’re proud to be part of this momentum. Together, we’re creating not just homes, but communities where families, workers, and neighbors can thrive.

here in 
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We’re thrilled to share that one of our longtime collaborators, Aceto Kimball Landscape Architecture + Urban Design, is featured in the October 2024 print issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine. The article, titled “In Their Backyards,” profiles the firm's innovative work on two Maine-based housing projects that directly address the state’s affordable housing crisis.

One of the highlighted projects is Dougherty Commons—an ambitious, city-led housing development taking shape on a small, city-owned parcel in Portland’s Libbytown neighborhood. Aceto Kimball is leading the site design for this 125-unit community, which will bring together a range of housing types—including two-story townhomes, three-story row houses, and a five-story apartment building—on just over three acres of land.

Thoughtfully arranged around a woonerf-style shared street and inviting common green spaces, the project embodies a fresh approach to housing development: one that emphasizes human-scaled design, walkability, and community connection. The name “Dougherty Commons” honors its neighbor, the 18-acre Dougherty Field, helping to tie the new development to the larger fabric of the neighborhood.

As the article notes, this project represents a strategic shift in how the City of Portland is leveraging underutilized public land to address a worsening housing shortage. From 2017 to 2023, the median home price in Portland doubled—a stark trend that has spurred local officials to reexamine city-owned properties as viable sites for mixed-income housing. Dougherty Commons is one of the first major test cases of this strategy.

At MCDP, we’re proud to partner with teams like Aceto Kimball who push the boundaries of what equitable development can look like. Their design leadership—grounded in ecological sensitivity, urban design principles, and a deep commitment to social equity—is helping us all imagine a more inclusive future for Maine’s cities and towns.

You can read the full article in the print edition of Landscape Architecture Magazine, October 2024 issue or click here for a pdf copy.

More About Aceto Kimball Landscape Architecture + Urban Design

PORTLAND, ME | JACKSON, NH
☎️ 207 221 3390
🌐 acetokimball.com

Author: Hannah Yechivi (NEWS CENTER Maine)
Published: 12:40 PM EST December 27, 2023

PORTLAND, Maine — For many years now, the city of Portland has been looking for more affordable housing units. In the early 2000s, the Portland city council chose a number of parcels in the city to put up for competition for ideas to develop housing.
Maine Cooperative Development Partners won the rights from the city to develop three out of the four housing parcels. One project site is located by the Dougherty fields, and the other two are in the North Deering area.

The ones in North Deering will be a mix of low-income tax-credit apartments and "c-op" housing units.
Tax increment financing (TIF) will support the proposal for Lambert Woods North, which will be 72 low-income tax-credit apartments, for families earning up to 60% of the area median income (that's around $70,000 a year for a family of four).
To build those affordable housing units, MCDV has partnered with the Boston-based nonprofit developer Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH).

Cory Fellows is the vice president of real estate development for POAH.
Fellows said the recently approved TIF will make a big difference. 
"One of the big challenges that we are seeing with affordable housing right now regardless of location is that the rents with affordable housing, you fix the rents so that people can afford to live there long-term, so your revenue from the rent side is capped, if you will. But the expenses are not, so you are still subject to increased utility costs, insurance costs have been a very big one in the industry, and local property taxes can be a big variable," Fellows said. 
Lambert Woods South will be a 90-unit middle income cooperative, for households earning 80% to 100% of the area median income (that's around $120,000 a year for a family of 4). A partner of Maine Cooperative Development Partners, Liz Trice, said the co-op project will be the first of its kind in Portland.

"For a long time we've just had rentals where the prices tend to go up every year on people," Trice explained. "And then we have home ownership, which is really hard for a lot of people to get into, so we see that in other states there are different forms of ownership that allow people more steps up along the way. So it's kind of in between renting and owning in that it gives you cost-stable housing for a really long time but its not as hard to get into as home ownership."

Trice also explained that "co-op" housing is also a way of retaining public investment in the public ownership, so as long as people live there, they get to have stable housing costs like an owner.
"But they didn't have to get a mortgage at the beginning, and when they leave they don't get a windfall of increased equity," she said. "They get to get back their shared price, which is sort of like a down payment with appreciation, but they don't get to get a lot of money like if you had a bank loan."
Last but not least, Dougherty Commons project by the Dougherty fields will have a little bit of everything: low-income apartments, middle-income apartments, and middle-income condos that people can buy. Last week, the Portland city council approved to support the condo project with a $1.5M housing trust fund. 
Trice said this whole project is one-of-a-kind.

"There's a bunch of things here. One, the city putting up their own land is innovative, the fact that they specifically asked for innovative models," she said. "And on these three parcels of land we have four different types of ownership and financing, so that's a really innovating thing that we hope that by doing all the hard work we've done for the past four years, that this will make it much easier to have new housing types in the future."

Original Article and Video

Portland Press Herald, Feb 28, 2023 - By Rachel Ohm, staff writer. 

A newly approved project in Portland’s North Deering neighborhood is expected to add 162 units of affordable housing.
The Lambert Woods project by Maine Cooperative Development Partners is moving ahead after the planning board’s 6-0 vote Tuesday to approve a major site plan for the project at 165 Lambert St. Chairperson Maggie Stanley was absent.
The firm believes the project and a sister project being developed in Libbytown are the first limited-equity co-ops in Portland – an ownership model that proponents say boosts affordability and gives residents more say over management and costs.
“The values we’ve brought to this all along are aspects of community, environment and also affordability,” Liz Trice, a partner at Maine Cooperative Development Partners, said before Tuesday’s vote. “We are sticking only with models that provide long-term affordability and we have done a ton of work to make the site really compact and preserve the surrounding forest.”
The project was approved conditionally, with the board also stipulating that Maine Cooperative Development Partners comply with a handful of additional requests, including that they provide documentation from utility companies about their ability to serve the project and contribute $13,200 to the city’s tree fund.
The project is expected to add an influx of much-needed affordable housing on either side of Washington Avenue Extension between Lambert and Auburn streets. . . read more and see images

​PORTLAND (WGME) – Many working families have been priced out of the housing market in Maine.
Now, a new development project is promising hundreds of new homes in the Portland area that median-income families can afford.
In 2019, the City of Portland chose four parcels of land to be developed for workforce housing.
Three of those parcels now belong to Maine Cooperative Development Partners.
"In a cooperative, you buy a share of the whole, and then you get a proprietary lease to live there,” Maine Cooperative Development Partners Partner Liz Trice said. “So you have stable housing costs for as long as you live there."
In order to qualify, a single person must make at least $47,000 a year, ranging up to, for a family of six, $130,000 a year.

"But again, those numbers are subject to change, and we'll have to remeasure them at the time people move in in 2024," Maine Cooperative Development Partners Partner Brian Eng said.
With another two years until completion, the land at 57 Douglass Street is full of overgrown grass, but the area holds a ton of potential, Trice says.
"Behind you is a Little League field,” Trice said. “This is going to become a new basketball court. There's a brand-new playground going over there. And then back here there are soccer fields."

The Douglass location is a three-minute walk to the nearest bus stop that Eng says eases the strain of a long drive to work for some.
"We've heard loud and clear from multiple employers across all different industries here in Portland, talking about how difficult it is to attract and retain talent these days because of the shortage of housing that's located close to where people work," Eng said.
Between all three parcels and 200 homes, the project's estimated cost is $40 million, funded through the City of Portland and HUD, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"We are currently waiting to hear on grants from the county and from the city,” Trice said. “And the county grants are especially important to us because that helps keep our share price low."
The project is in its third week taking $500 deposits to secure a spot in line for a house.
For more information, click here.

wgme.com/news/local/new-development-project-promises-hundreds-homes-median-income-families-portland-maine-housing-market 

​Renderings of the Doughtery Commons project, which will include 57 units of limited equity cooperative housing and a 63-unit apartment building of mostly affordable apartments. Rendering courtesy of Maine Cooperative Development Partners/Aceto Landscape Architects

BY RACHEL OHM, STAFF WRITER 5/30/22

A newly approved project in Portland’s Libbytown neighborhood is expected to add 120 units of housing, about half set up in a cooperative model in which residents will jointly own and manage the property.
​
The remainder of the units at Dougherty Commons, which was approved by the Planning Board last week, will be a mix of apartments, mostly affordable, some market rate. Just over half of the total units in the project will be available at rates affordable to households earning either at or below 60 percent or at or below 80 percent of the area median income.

“We’re excited about it,” said Liz Trice, a partner with Maine Cooperative Development Partners, the Portland company that is developing and will manage the cooperative housing part of the project. “We’re excited for the opportunity to do something we feel good about and that we feel will be a good model going forward.”

The project, located at 57 Douglass St., came out of the city’s 2020 request for proposals for affordable housing on the former site of the West School, which was demolished in 2016. Maine Cooperative Development Partners was selected in November 2020 along with the Szanton Company, which will develop and manage a five-story, 63-unit apartment building on the site. They plan to break ground in the spring of 2023.

Maine Cooperative Development Partners is working on a 57-unit limited equity cooperative made up of seven townhome-style buildings. Cooperatives are owned and managed by residents rather than landlords, and proponents say they can help create permanent affordable housing for people who don’t make enough to afford market rates.

In a limited equity co-op, as opposed to a market rate co-op, the buy-in is often lower but there are also restrictions on the amount of profit residents can get from selling their shares.

State law requires that homes in limited equity co-ops be affordable to households making 100 percent of the area median income, which in 2021 was $70,000 for one person and $100,000 for a family of four in Cumberland County, according to Maine Cooperative Development Partners. In addition, the city is requiring that 25 percent of the project – or 15 units – be reserved for households earning 80 percent of the area median income or less.

The current cost estimate for the cooperative at Dougherty Commons is for residents to pay an up-front share price ranging from $5,000 to $30,000 and a monthly amount including utilities ranging from roughly $1,000 to $2,500 – based on the size of the unit, income of the household and the number of people in the household.

“What we’ve been seeing right now for the last five years or so is that for a lot of people who would have had the opportunity to buy a home in Portland, that’s become impossible,” Trice said. “We think that’s a likely market (for our project.) Another market would be people who maybe were happy renting but now they’re realizing monthly rents are just going to keep going up and they may be forced out if they don’t do something different.”

The 63-unit apartment building being built by the Szanton Company will include 46 deed-restricted workforce housing units, to be rented at an affordable rate to households earning at or below 60 percent of the area median income, and the remaining units rented at market rate.

Right now, an affordable one-bedroom unit would rent for about $1,200 while a market-rate one-bedroom would be about $1,500, according to Carl Szanton, development associate with the Szanton Company. Szanton said it’s possible that some of the market-rate units in the building could be flipped to workforce units because of rising construction costs and tax credits that are available for building affordable units.
“Housing in the city of Portland is in such short supply right now, so we’re really excited to build much-needed housing right in the middle of the city that will be affordable to low- and moderate-income Portlanders,” Szanton said.

Zack Barowitz, a member and past chair of the board of the Libbytown Neighborhood Association, said members of the association and neighbors generally have been supportive of the project, though there have been some concerns about an overabundance of parking.

The project is slated to include 78 parking spots, though Barowitz said there is ample street parking. “There are environmental concerns. It constitutes a bit of dead space and it encourages more car usage by having parking included,” Barowitz said.

Ultimately, though, he said members of the association are excited about the project. “Many of the neighbors are quite pleased to have so many workforce housing units in the neighborhood, which will add to the enrichment of the neighborhood and a badly needed workforce for the city,” he said.

​https://www.pressherald.com/2022/05/30/libbytown-complex-with-affordable-housing-wins-approval/

As tenants organize to take over their buildings, there's been an increased interest in going the co-op route. Could the networks that support resident-owned mobile home park communities shift their focus to support residents of multifamily buildings that want to go co-op?

Image caption: Northcountry Cooperative Foundation’s Julie Martinez introduces herself to the Sky Without Limits residents at a meeting on June 2. Photo courtesy of Victoria Clark, via Northcountry Cooperative Foundation

By Meir Rinde - Originally published in https://shelterforce.org/2021/08/02/from-mobile-home-parks-to-multifamily-housing-cooperatives/   August 2, 2021

During her tenure at Northcountry Cooperative Foundation (NCF), Victoria Clark has become an expert at helping mobile homeowners buy the land where they live. In many places, residents of mobile home parks have suffered as park owners sell out to private-equity firms that then jack up lot rents and reduce services. But since 1999, with assistance from NCF, 823 households in 12 resident-owned communities (ROCs) around the Upper Midwest have kept their rents low, invested in infrastructure, made decisions democratically, and enjoyed the pride of ownership.

“We’re essentially providing assistance to small cities. They maintain their own roads, water, sewer, electrical. I mean, holy cow,” says Clark, executive director of the Minneapolis-based nonprofit. “Our ROC program is amazing, it works really well, and we’re doing it at scale.”

Yet while resident-owned communities help mitigate the region’s housing affordability crisis, Clark thinks NCF could do much more. She notes that Minnesota has one of the nation’s worst racial gaps in homeownership: while 77 percent of white families own their homes, among households of color and Native Americans the rate is 44 percent. For Black families it is just 27 percent. In Minneapolis a city-commissioned study found a shortage of homes affordable to buyers earning below $60,000, and a severe shortage for those with incomes under $30,000.

To help address that vast need, NCF is tiptoeing into the field of urban, multifamily cooperatives. Clark and her colleagues have been working with the South Minneapolis tenant group Sky Without Limits, which is in the process of gaining ownership of five apartment buildings after a lengthy struggle with a negligent landlord. NCF is hoping to serve as the group’s technical assistance provider when it sets up a formal cooperative structure.

“That’s going to be our first foray into the multifamily world,” Clark says. “It’s exciting for us organizationally because we want to get into this space. We want to figure out how to do multifamily limited-equity co-ops.”
‘LEGALLY, STRUCTURALLY, FINANCIALLY IT’S VERY DIFFERENT … [BUT] ON THE CO-OP GOVERNANCE SIDE A LOT OF IT IS TRANSFERABLE, BECAUSE YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT DEMOCRATIC MEMBERSHIPS AND BOARDS.

NCF has also looked into developing senior cooperative housing, and it is conducting a study of naturally occurring affordable housing around the state so it can identify buildings that are good candidates for cooperative conversion, she says.

Clark acknowledged that multifamily co-ops differ in important ways from mobile home ROCs. A resident-owned community owns land but not living units, while a traditional co-op owns and maintains its buildings. When a resident-owned community buys a mobile home park, it arranges a financing package and borrows against the land, whereas multifamily acquisitions are typically financed by tenants’ individual share loans in addition to the mortgage. As it enters multifamily organizing, NCF may also have to develop different technical assistance contract terms and funding sources for its work than those used in the standard ROC model.

But Clark says the essential work of organizing residents and helping them run their cooperatives is similar in both arrangements, and she believes her organization is well-positioned to add multifamily communities to its portfolio. Along the way NCF will also look to real estate developers and to experts at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) in New York for guidance and advice.

“We’re doing this in the Wild West of real estate, which is manufactured home communities,” Clark says. “If we can crack this nut that’s so complicated, that has all these layers of complexity because people own their own individual homes, why can’t we do the same type of thing in the multifamily rental world?”

Strengthening the NetworkTenant groups have been creating affordable cooperative housing for decades, particularly in New York, and activists have reported a surge of new interest from municipalities, tenants, and local nonprofits in the last few years. Several new limited-equity co-ops (LECs), which are designed to keep rents low and maintain long-term affordability, have popped up around the country. A few cities and states are considering passing laws similar to Washington D.C.’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) that would facilitate cooperative conversions.

In the past, UHAB worked with local housing practitioners to help create cooperatives in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Oakland, Des Moines, Omaha, and Washington, D.C., UHAB Executive Director Andrew Reicher says. Some of those co-ops are still operating, but as federal funding declined over the years many of the local organizations that helped create and nurture them disappeared. Restoring and expanding that provider structure is essential to the endurance and growth of co-ops, Reicher says.

“Maintaining those groups on the ground [that] can provide ongoing trainings for new board members, help them each year with their budget, help them with an election, making sure they’re in compliance with their regulatory agreements, whatever it is—that support system is really what’s important.”

NCF is one of 12 affiliates of the ROC USA Network, a New Hampshire nonprofit that coordinates collaboration among members and helps finance conversions. ROC USA affiliates work in 20 states, and with their ample experience they could play an important role in rebuilding the national support system for housing cooperatives, Clark and others say.

“Having the ROC groups, who are providing technical assistance to a cousin sort of co-op, learn those skills and be able to deal with multifamily housing is a great thing,” Reicher says.

ROC USA is deeply focused on mobile home parks and is not interested in adding multifamily housing to its brand, CEO Paul Bradley says. But he says affiliates like NCF are welcome to expand and branch out into different areas, and he agreed that their skills are clearly applicable to multifamily organizing.

“All of our affiliates are involved in multiple lines of business, so multifamily co-op work would be a new line for them,” Bradley says. “Legally, structurally, financially it’s very different. It operates under a different tax code. [But] on the co-op governance side a lot of it is transferable, because you’re talking about democratic memberships and boards.”

Middle-Income Co-opsWhen Brian Eng, a housing developer in Portland, Maine, and UHAB board member, became interested in co-ops a few years ago, his search for partners soon led him to the Cooperative Development Institute (CDI). A ROC USA affiliate in Portland and the largest ROC technical assistance provider in the country, CDI has assisted 53 mobile home park conversions in Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Maine Cooperative Development Partners’ plans for Douglass Commons include an apartment building with 56 units, and seven buildings comprising 52 limited equity cooperative units. Photo courtesy of Maine Cooperative Development Partners“UHAB has a lot of intellectual capital, but we don’t have a lot of people, so we need local affiliates if this is going to happen,” says Eng, who grew up in cooperative housing in New York. When Eng set out to develop co-ops in Portland, CDI played a key role in bringing the idea to city council and explaining its benefits, he says. “People in Maine just don’t have a conception of a cooperative. It might as well be from Mars, even though it’s not really that foreign.”

Eng’s interest stems from watching home prices soar in Portland over the last two decades, due in part to an influx of wealthy new residents from other states. The high prices have forced public sector employees like teachers and police officers to live well outside the city and commute long distances, he says.
“Ironically, a lot of people who are part of the public domain in Portland cannot afford to live here as owners. That’s the gap we’re trying to fill. There has just not been the creation of housing within the Portland city limits for people who work for the city,” he says.

Eng had started exploring cooperative development after reading about Raise-Op, a pioneering affordable housing co-op in Lewiston, Maine. Through that group he connected with CDI, which has provided technical assistance services to Raise-Op and also works with agricultural and business cooperatives. CDI staffers advised him to speak with a supportive Portland city councilor and made a presentation to council about housing cooperatives.

Portland subsequently solicited developer proposals for a set of city-owned parcels and last year selected Eng’s firm, Maine Cooperative Development Partners (MCDP), to build two “missing middle” projects. They are meant for residents who cannot afford Portland prices but do not qualify for more deeply affordable housing support.

Eng said CDI has played a key role in the effort so far and he expects the organization will formally sign on as a technical assistance provider, with help from UHAB. CDI and Eng’s firm have already been organizing prospective residents to join the cooperative, including several immigrant families.

“The resident support is crucial,” Eng says. “MCDP is not going to be operationally involved after people move in; that’s where CDI is going to play that crucial role.”

Creating a Model

Even before Eng contacted them, CDI staff had been thinking about moving into multifamily work and were talking with Portland officials about how city-owned parcels could be used to address the need for affordable housing, says Doug Clopp, head of media and governmental affairs at CDI.
Council approval of the two projects over competing proposals bodes well for the future of affordable co-ops in New England and beyond, he says.

“We’re very excited to see how this project rolls out, and hopefully it’s a model for other cities across the country. It’s a great story about bringing together city resources, federal resources, private sector, and public nonprofits like CDI—that unique collaboration, where everybody’s kind of rowing in the same direction,” he says. “You can build a cooperative, purposeful community in a city facing huge, huge gentrification issues.”

Clopp described the movement across New England to create more limited-equity cooperatives and other housing cooperatives as “nascent.” Interest is driven by the experiences of the 2008 recession and the pandemic, along with the “craziness” of the real estate market, he says. Advocates are currently trying to pass a TOPA law in Massachusetts, which already has over 100 housing co-ops of various sizes and types across the state.

“Clearly the demand is there, so the question is, who’s meeting the demand?” Clopp says.

A model like the Portland project, or Raise-Op’s work in Lewiston, where it has three small multifamily co-ops and is planning to build two more, could also work in other older mid-size industrial cities like Worcester and Springfield in Massachusetts, he says. CDI would bring its deep experience in community outreach and organizing and learn the rest as it goes.

“It’s that old expression, you make the path by walking it. Do we know where that leads? We don’t. But you’ve got to try,” he says.

Clopp says the organization would have to increase its technical assistance capacity generally. Ideally other nonprofits would also step up with projects and multiply the number of new affordable housing opportunities across the region.

“We want to work cooperatively,” he says. “If you had 10 organizations doing this it would be a teaspoon in an ocean to meet the demand. So let’s see if we can put successful models together that can be replicated by anyone.”