A town 1 hour from Portland is leading its region on housing

The western Maine lake town of Bridgton is permitting new housing at the highest rate in Greater Portland, according to new data from a regional group.

Bridgton, which has a 5,600-resident population that doubles in the summer, issued 162 new building permits last year, according to new housing data from the Greater Portland Council of Governments.

That’s more per resident than any other municipality in the region, including Portland and its growing suburbs of Westbrook, Scarbrough and Windham. Bridgton even permitted more units of housing than larger communities like Falmouth, Cape Elizabeth and Yarmouth.

It shows that the small community is “more than pulling its weight” in addressing a regional housing shortage while other larger towns are struggling to do their part, Kristina Egan, the executive director of the council, said at a Tuesday housing summit.

It’s estimated that Maine needs at least 76,000 new homes by 2030 to accommodate existing and future residents. Egan held Bridgton up as an example of a regional leader in reaching that goal, but all towns in the desirable southern part of the state will have to pitch in.

The new units in Bridgton are a mixture of apartments, condos and single-family homes, Tori Hill, the town’s planning and development director, said. Most of them are market rate, but the town is trying to produce more affordable housing, she said. In February, a 48-apartment senior living complex was completed by the Portland-based Developers Collaborative.

Bridgton is seeing a housing boom because of its desirability as a place to live, its developer-friendly climate and recent infrastructure investments including $20 million for an updated wastewater system , Hill said. One homegrown developer, Main Eco Homes, has added hundreds of housing units to the town alone.

“All those factors combined really just kind of skyrocketed our building permits,” Hill said.

A majority of Bridgton residents voted in 2020 to approve Developers Collaborative establishing a tax-increment financing district to support the senior housing project. In other greater Portland towns including Cumberland, where only 32 building permits were issued last year, voters have come out against those sorts of projects.

“We definitely had a good experience,” Laura Reading, the director of affordable housing at Developers Collaborative, said. “The town was supportive and open to an affordable housing development, you know, not every town is receptive to those.”

Both Hill and Reading cited Bridgton’s desirability as a place to live as part of the reason for this permitting uptick. It is considered part of the greater Portland region but boasts recreational opportunities including the Pleasant Mountain ski area and lakes. It has a downtown with businesses and eateries, but the town still has a rural character.

Many Bridgton residents are in favor of the changes more permitting has brought about, Hill said. About 44 percent of respondents to a town survey she conducted recently said they would support building more affordable housing. But the boom in housing production does have some concerned about the town losing its rural flavor, Hill noted.

It is leading officials to attempt to strike a “careful balance” between building more housing for new residents while making sure locals are not priced out, she said.

While the average household income in Bridgton could finance a home up to about $269,000, average home values in the area are over $384,000, according to Zillow . There are only a handful of rentals on the market in town right now, the cheapest going for more than $1,200 a month.

Hill is in the midst of preparing an update to Bridgton’s comprehensive plan that will look at how to keep up the rate of growth while getting more affordable options in the pipeline.

“We’re just excited to possibly be part of helping solve the housing crisis,” Hill said. “We’re trying to be respectful of people that live here and also welcoming change.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong number of building permits issued last year in Bridgton. It was 162.