Developers will soon be able to choose from six preapproved housing designs to use for free in Bangor, a move city leaders hope will lead to the creation of more homes and apartment buildings.
The city paid Scarborough-based Gawron Turgeon Dillon Architects $182,400 to design six homes of various sizes that developers can choose from when building new housing, according to Anne Krieg, Bangor’s community and economic development director.
The architects started the project last summer and toured Bangor’s neighborhoods to ensure their designs blend into the city’s existing housing, Krieg said. The free plans range from accessory dwelling units to four-family buildings.
“It’s a choice — if people like the designs, they can use them,” Krieg said. “People may want to adjust things or use different finishes, but overall, they’ll be able to use a set of building plans that they know meet city code.”
The city hopes offering the free blueprints will incentivize people to build more housing in Bangor at a time when building costs continue to soar. City leaders recently learned Bangor has a shortage of 700 housing units for people earning less than $35,000 annually, according to a study completed by HR&A Advisors.
Offering free designs removes one of the many costs housing developers must pay before they even break ground, Krieg said. For example, developers have to pay to buy land and prepare a set of building plans for the city’s Planning Board to review.
Typically, architects will charge developers 10 percent of the total cost to construct a home, Krieg said, so the larger and more expensive a home is, the more the architect will cost.
Krieg didn’t have estimates of what each preapproved housing design would cost to build.
Providing designs also helps anyone who may not have the funds to hire an architect to draft a quality home that meets city codes and fits in with the surrounding neighborhood.
“I’m really excited and I’m hoping people take advantage of these plans,” Krieg said. “Building codes can be really complicated, so it’s good for the city to take the lead and provide well thought-out plans that meet city codes.”
Krieg plans to bring the proposed designs to the Bangor City Council’s Business and Economic Development Committee next month for approval before the sketches are made available for anyone to use.
The Bangor 2022 Comprehensive Plan determined housing availability and affordability is a key issue in the region and the city should do more to encourage development, especially of units that are near public amenities, such as transportation.
To that end, the Comprehensive Plan recommended the city “develop a library of preapproved building plan sets to reduce the development costs” and encourage more housing to be built.
