A rendering of the eight-unit condo building and single-family home being built on Bodwell Street in Sanford. “We’re trying to keep housing fun,” developer Kara Wilbur said about the decision to add chickens to the image on the property listing. Rendering by Dooryard and New Paradigm Design Workshop

A development of modular homes is headed for downtown Sanford in an effort to boost the city’s housing stock and revitalize the downtown. The chickens are optional.

A collaboration between development company Dooryard and MaineHousing, the project at 19 Bodwell St. includes eight small one-bedroom condos and one separate, three-bedroom condo that developer Kara Wilbur said is designed as a typical starter home.

Wilbur is trying to increase the popularity of modular homes, which she said can play an important role in solving the state’s critical dearth of affordable housing.

The houses are designed to fit in with the traditional New England village aesthetic, she said, allowing them to blend into the existing neighborhood.

They’re more compact, so they’re efficient and more affordable, and, being modular, can be set up quickly and, ideally, plug into existing infrastructure.

The one-bedroom condos range in size from 392 square feet to 416 square feet and are priced between $249,000 and $309,000. The 817-square-foot, three-bedroom single-family home is listed for $349,000.

As part of MaineHousing’s Affordable Home Ownership Program, the units will be reserved for people making within 120% of the area median income or about $110,000.

The condos have the same floor plan (just with a different style roof) as a recent project in Madison, which added 18 affordable apartments in two buildings.

Wilbur said the $2.6 million project should be completed in about six months, once the presale process is completed.

The houses have already been listed online, and Wilbur expects the units will go quickly.

“I imagine they’ll be appealing to young couples and singles and seniors who are looking to downsize and stay in their community or region,” she said.

The property listings tout the front porch, shady backyard and proximity to Sanford’s “gritty mills.” They also inexplicably include multiple chickens in the renderings.

Wilbur said she and graphic designer Chris Miller, at New Paradigm Design Workshop, share a sense of humor and believe there’s room in the housing conversation for more playful design.

“We’re trying to keep housing fun,” Wilbur said of the artistic choice.

A UNIQUE CHALLENGE

Maine has the oldest housing stock in the country, and Sanford is no exception. The houses are even older in the downtown area because people historically wanted to live close to the mill yard, which was once the city’s primary employer, said Keith McBride, executive director of the Sanford Regional Economic Growth Council.

“Dealing with an older housing stock is a unique challenge on its own,” he said – one that requires private development.

Enter the Sanford Land Bank Authority. Created through an initiative passed in 2017, the authority takes hazardous or derelict properties and gets them into the hands of private developers through a variety of incentives and programs.

It was the land bank program, Wilbur said, that helped make the Bodwell Street project feasible.

The property was formerly a United Methodist Church and parsonage that, victim to arson and vandalism, was deemed hazardous and ultimately demolished in 2011.

Because she signed a purchase-and-sale agreement with the city, rather than a private homeowner, Wilbur was able to get a more affordable price and could extend her “due diligence” period multiple times while she scrambled to “close the gap” between high construction costs and affordability.

Wilbur said she was excited by the city’s “proactive” approach.

“They’re doing really good work there, and it feels like a place with positive forward momentum,” she said. “Our mill towns have been so mistreated and neglected, they deserve some attention.”

A TRANSFORMING CITY

The project will join at least two others slated to add more housing in the downtown area. One of the projects, a 30-unit development of both affordable and market-rate apartments, is planned for the other end of Bodwell Street near the city’s Central Park.

The new housing projects come at a pivotal time for the York County city, which officials say is in the midst of a rebirth.

They’ve been chipping away at the work for years: mill renovations, downtown activities, educational upgrades and business attraction efforts.

But a series of recent investments – including a multimillion-dollar grant from the government, a multimillion-dollar investor with plans to rehab a deteriorating mill building and hundreds of housing units in the works – promises to trigger a surge of activity.

The redevelopment efforts, coupled with the state’s ongoing affordable housing crisis, have caused homes sale prices to skyrocket. The Sanford median single-family sale price in Maine in 2019 was $199,900. In 2023, it was $340,000 – a 70% increase that is expected to rise even higher in 2024.

Adding housing, especially affordable units, in Sanford is a big part of the city’s economic development strategy, McBride said.

Area businesses are struggling to recruit and retain high-quality candidates because they can’t find affordable housing, he said, so “it bodes well for the opportunity for people to come here and fill those positions with our local businesses.”