The Northern Forest Center’s housing development project in Greenville, Maine, is picking up steam and heading toward a formal groundbreaking in spring 2026.  

This is the largest housing project the Center has undertaken to date and is our first foray into new construction. Building on our successful redevelopment projects in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, the Spruce Street project calls for new construction of up to 28 new homes in a community where employers are stymied by the inability to recruit and retain employees because of the lack of middle-income housing opportunities.  

In spring 2024, the Center purchased a 5.5-acre lot in Greenville within walking distance of downtown as well as the local school and hospital, and excellent outdoor recreation opportunities. In partnership with the town and the Moosehead Lake Region Economic Development Corporation, we have developed plans for phased development of a mix of housing options and types – including single family and duplex buildings – to create quality, year-round housing for people living and working in the community. Some of the homes will be offered as rentals, some will be sold, and none of the properties will be available for short-term rental with deed covenants to maintain full-time residency.   

As part of the project, the Center is working closely with the town to address infrastructure challenges that have been barriers to past efforts to develop the Spruce Street property.  

In fall 2023, the Center helped the town secure roughly $1million from the Northern Border Regional Commission to support expansion of necessary public infrastructure to the property. With matching support from the Center, the infrastructure phase of the project will extend public water and sewer service and construct a new public road on the Spruce Street property. After extensive environmental review and site engineering, in September the town secured a contractor for this project and plans are in place for ground-breaking in spring 2026 – as soon as the ground thaws.  

In preparation for work on the Spruce Street property, the Center hired a logging contractor to clear the land this past August. This included fully clearing the location of the planned public road and selectively clearing the area where new homes will be located – retaining some existing trees to provide shade and natural landscaping. The Maine Woods Pellet Company in Harmony will transform wood harvested from the property into fuel for modern wood heat systems in use across the Northern Forest and beyond.  

In addition to building quality homes for year-round residents, the Center is also using the Spruce Street project as an opportunity to develop and test a new residential construction approach using mass timber and an innovative assembly technology. In partnership with a Vermont-founded start-up firm, TMBR, we are seeking to address systemic issues in the housing market by using an innovative mass timber housing platform customized for rural places. This technology and assembly have the potential to transform rural housing development by reducing the cost of building quality housing and growing the demand for mass timber in residential construction. If successful and more widely adopted, it represents a significant new market opportunity for wood grown and harvested in the Northern Forest.  

With the public infrastructure phase of this project lined up to start in the spring, the Center plans to launch housing construction in summer 2026 with the goal of making the first set of high quality, wood-based homes – priced for the middle market – available for year-round residents in Greenville in spring 2027.