As I walked out to my car to head home after another day of broadcasting, I heard the loud buzz of saws and powerful motors churning. When I looked across the street, I saw that the day had come. Preliminary work was underway on the site that will soon be the home to Portland's tallest building and Maine's tallest residential building.

In May, the Portland City Planning Board approved the construction of 200 Federal, an 18-story apartment building planned by Redfern Properties, a company that has built several of Portland's modern-looking buildings around the city recently.

The location is just as the name says. 200 Federal Street on the corner with Temple Avenue. The site is currently a parking lot and plaza which also serves as the back entrance to the United States Postal Service's downtown station. I had a PO box here for many years because of the convince of it being right across the street from work. Now all I get in the mail is junk, so why waste the money?

Townsquare Media - Jeff Parsons
Townsquare Media - Jeff Parsons
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Heavy equipment was at the plaza this morning along with a ton of orange barrels and a street lamp had been taken down.

Townsquare Media - Jeff Parsons
Townsquare Media - Jeff Parsons
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This appears to be preliminary work on the site by Maine Tree Company based out of Freeport, cutting down trees and shrubs and throwing them in the wood chipper, likely clearing the way for the construction on the building to begin.

Townsquare Media - Jeff Parsons
Townsquare Media - Jeff Parsons
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You can read my thoughts on building an 18-story-building in Portland that I shared back in February. Gotta admit it's going to seem weird to see that plaza empty of trees to be replaced shorts by tall steel structures rising into the air. People probably thought the same thing when our building, One City Center, started construction back in the 80s on a parking lot called "The Golden Triangle."

Time marches on.

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LOOK: Here are the pets banned in each state

Because the regulation of exotic animals is left to states, some organizations, including The Humane Society of the United States, advocate for federal, standardized legislation that would ban owning large cats, bears, primates, and large poisonous snakes as pets.

Read on to see which pets are banned in your home state, as well as across the nation.

 

 

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