Brewer will soon have a little more housing for those looking to live and work in the greater Bangor area.
The Brewer Planning Board unanimously approved a 20-unit housing development off Lambert Road on Monday night.
The apartments will each have two bedrooms, two parking spaces and will be divided between five single-story multi-family buildings, according to Chip Haskell, a project manager for Haley Ward who represented the applicant, Maine-based White Pine Road LLC.
The new rental units were approved as the state faces a deficit of roughly 38,500 homes due to historic underproduction, according to a study commissioned by the Maine State Housing Authority that was released in October 2023. Since then, the Bangor City Council declared it will prioritize expanding housing in 2024 to meet the pressing need for housing both locally and statewide.
The newly-approved rental apartments will not have age or income restrictions, though an estimated rental cost hasn’t yet been determined, Haskell said.
The apartment buildings will sit on a private, dead-end street on about 11 acres of undeveloped land near the Eddington town line, Haskell said.
In 2004, the Brewer Planning Board approved another housing subdivision, Nature’s Way Estates, on that land, but the developer only built a stretch of road. That project approval has since lapsed, as the housing was never built, and is considered void.
If the project receives necessary stormwater permits from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection on time, Haskell said construction could begin this season.
There were no public comments on the proposed project when it was reviewed during a Brewer Planning Board meeting on Monday.
