The Right Equation for Responsible Development: Spotlight on UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences (Portland)

MEREDA Recognizes its 2025 Notable Project Award Recipients

Each year, the Maine Real Estate & Development Association (MEREDA) recognizes some of the state's most "noteworthy and significant" real estate projects, completed in the previous year. The exemplary projects from across the state, completed in 2025, not only embody MEREDA's belief in responsible real estate development, but also exemplify best practices in the industry, contributing to Maine's economic growth by significant investment of resources and job creation statewide.

This year, MEREDA honored projects from throughout the state, with each receiving special recognition at MEREDA's 2026 "Notable Night" social celebration in April.

In a multi-part series exclusive to the Maine Real Estate Insider published by Mainebiz, we'll provide an up-close look at the most notable commercial development projects of the past year that are helping to fuel Maine's economy in terms of investment and job creation. MEREDA is proud to recognize responsible development based upon criteria including environmental sustainability, economic impact, energy efficiency, difficulty of the development, uniqueness, social impact and job creation.

Mainebiz also featured each of our Notable Project Recipients in their second annual "Groundbreaking Maine " publication. Be sure to check it out!

MEREDA's 2025 Top 7 recipients include:

The Downs, M&R Development (Scarborough)

Estabrook's Pownal Production Facility, Estabrook Farm & Greenhouse, Inc. (Pownal)

UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences, SMRT Architects & Engineers (Portland)

Wedgewood, Avesta Housing & Lewiston Housing (Lewiston)

University of Maine Shawn Walsh Hockey Center and Harold Alfond Sports Arena Renovations and Additions , University of Maine (Orono)

Boyd Block (178 Middle Street), East Brown Cow (Portland)

Gehring House, Northern Forest Center (Bethel)

Please join us this week in celebratin g UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences.

MEREDA: Describe the building and project.

UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences : The University of New England Harold and Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences (UNE) is a 112,000-square-foot academic facility that consolidates the UNE's health sciences programs, osteopathic medicine, dental medicine, nursing, and allied health, into a unified learning environment on its Portland campus. The building is organized around two interconnected wings: one houses donor labs, simulation environments, and standardized patient suites; the other provides flexible classrooms, commons, and faculty offices. A hybrid structural strategy pairs steel framing in lab environments that require large, clear spans and controlled conditions with exposed mass timber in student-centered spaces, creating warm, daylit interiors that support wellness and collaboration. Strategic site integration responds to campus topography and historic Westbrook College context while establishing a clear campus gateway and preserving green corridors. The project demonstrates how integrated design can advance sustainability, interprofessional education, and long-term institutional performance.

MEREDA: What was the impetus for this project?

UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences : UNE recognized that its existing Portland campus infrastructure, health sciences programs scattered across aging, disconnected buildings, actively undermined the university's pedagogical mission of preparing collaborative healthcare teams. The College of Osteopathic Medicine was located on UNE's Biddeford campus, separated from dental medicine, nursing, and allied health programs in Portland, making true interprofessional education difficult. Maine faces persistent healthcare workforce shortages, particularly in rural and underserved communities, and UNE, as the state's only medical school, sought to expand training capacity while strengthening team-based learning. The university needed a facility that could consolidate programs, improve operational efficiency, and create a purpose-built environment for modern healthcare education, one where students from different disciplines could learn alongside one another in shared labs, simulation suites, and flexible classrooms. This consolidation wasn't just about efficiency; it was about fundamentally transforming how future healthcare providers are trained.

MEREDA: How long were you in the planning stages before construction started?

UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences : Planning began in early 2021 with an intensive programming and visioning phase that engaged leadership, faculty, students, and operations staff across UNE's four health sciences colleges. This stakeholder-driven process mapped workflows, adjacencies, operational requirements, and accreditation needs to ensure the building could support distinct program identities while enabling interprofessional collaboration. Early design focused on right-sizing the facility, aligning space standards with year-round utilization, and establishing clear organizational principles: vertical program stacking, hybrid structure, and biophilic design that would guide the project through subsequent phases. Planning also included lifecycle assessment, energy modeling, and sustainability analysis to validate that material and system choices aligned with UNE's environmental stewardship goals. Construction began in early 2022, approximately one year after initial planning kicked off. This compressed timeline reflected UNE's urgency to address capacity constraints and consolidate programs, but the integrated approach ensured decisions made early, massing, structural strategy, and adjacencies remained durable as the project advanced.

MEREDA: Tell us about the most challenging aspect of getting this project completed.

UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences : The most challenging aspect was coordinating a complex institutional transition while managing the technical demands of a hybrid building. UNE needed to relocate the College of Osteopathic Medicine from Biddeford and consolidate multiple programs, each with distinct workflows and accreditation requirements, without disrupting operations.

Programmatically, donor labs require specialized ventilation; standardized patient suites need acoustic privacy; flexible classrooms demand robust technology infrastructure. Organizing these into a cohesive layout required intensive coordination.

The hybrid structural strategy added complexity. Detailing the interface between steel-framed lab wings and mass timber student wings, integrating braced steel frames for lateral stability, and coordinating MEP systems with exposed timber required rigorous BIM coordination. Protecting exposed timber while running ductwork, managing vibration in long-span classrooms, and maintaining schedule demanded sustained attention. The result aligns material strategy with program needs, but achieving that required disciplined integration from design through construction.

MEREDA: Something unexpected you learned along the way was….

UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences : One lesson was how decisions made at the beginning of a project, especially around high-performance systems, create challenges you don't fully see until construction. We chose a Konvekta energy recovery system for the donor labs that saves 1,677 MMBtu annually compared to traditional lab ventilation. On paper, the lifecycle cost and Efficiency Maine incentives justified the upfront premium. But validating that performance required sustained coordination across disciplines and constant stakeholder alignment as costs and complexity became visible during construction.

The hybrid structure added another layer. Mass timber creates warm, supportive student spaces; steel serves the labs. Where those systems meet, you're not just solving a structural connection; you're coordinating different mechanical strategies, fire protection requirements, and construction sequencing. Protecting exposed wood while running ductwork through a building designed for precision air control meant trade coordination and BIM modeling well beyond a typical project.

The takeaway: performance-based decisions pay off in operational savings and building longevity, but they require teams willing to stay disciplined when execution gets complicated. Early commitments to sustainability and efficiency create downstream complexity. That's not a reason to avoid them, it's a reason to plan for them.

MEREDA: Now that it's complete, what feature of the project do you think makes it the most notable?

UNE Harold & Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences : The project's most notable feature is its hybrid structural strategy, not as a technical achievement in isolation, but as a demonstration of strategic material use aligned with program, performance, and human experience. Mass timber is deployed where it delivers maximum value: student-occupied spaces where exposed glulam and CLT create warm, calming interiors that support wellness and reduce stress in a high-pressure academic environment. Steel framing serves lab environments requiring large clear spans, durable, cleanable finishes, and tightly controlled building systems. This isn't compromise, it's precision. The result is a building that reduces embodied carbon, supports long-term adaptability, and creates distinct spatial experiences that reinforce program identity while enabling collaboration. It also establishes a replicable model for Maine and New England: institutions can pursue sustainability and wellness goals in complex, lab-intensive facilities without sacrificing operational performance. The building demonstrates that high-performance design is about making deliberate, informed decisions about where materials, systems, and spatial strategies provide the greatest return: environmentally, operationally, and experientially.

For more information on these seven impressive projects, please click here.