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V I E W P O I N T S W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 3 J U LY 2 6 , 2 0 2 1 bernsteinshur.com Be selective. BE SHUR. When you need a partner who knows the law and your industry. From the Editor Featured @ Mainebiz.biz For a daily digest of Maine's top business news, sign up for the Mainebiz Daily Report at mainebiz.biz/enews Get Maine's business news daily at mainebiz.biz and on Twitter (@Mainebiz). Below is our most popular content for the period from June 29 to July 19. 1. Portland cracks top 10 'best places to live,' but US News ranking adds warning 2. Former IDEXX CEO finds new purpose in philanthropy after catastrophic bike accident 3. Portland's newest hotel opens for business, with others to come 4. History in the making: UMaine mulls $17M plan to convert iconic buildings into campus hotel 5. Local investor scoops up Saco warehouse vacated by Scholastic Book Fairs 6. Abbott Labs will lay off more than 300 workers in southern Maine 7. Developer plans condos for 'luxury toys' at Cook's Corner 8. KeyBank beefs up New England wealth management team 9. Three Rockland waterfront properties packaged as single listing 10. Functional family: Topsham Fair Mall is a who's who of Maine-owned businesses, including a new member F I L E P H O T O 1 W e've seen a number of real estate trends over the past 18 months, but one thing is constant: change. e pandemic drove people out of cities and into Maine. A red-hot market for existing homes fueled an increase in building permits. Demand for more flexible office space kept brokers and builders work- ing hard to adapt. Case in point, as Renee Cordes reports in our cover story, Maine's employers are coming up with new and creative ways to convert spaces for workers returning to the office. See "Space odyssey," which starts on Page 14. Some of Maine's largest development projects have depended on a small inspection company that has been largely unknown, until now. See "Taking it to the bank," which starts on Page 20. As we indicated, the tight market for existing homes has potential buyers turning to new home construction. e number of building permits issued is on pace to be at the highest level since 2006, during Maine's last building boom. See ""Squeezed home market also fuel- ing rise in building permits," on Page 24. Photographer Tim Greenway has been a Mainebiz contributor for a decade and a half. He has been observing changes in the Portland skyline. For this issue, in addition to the feature photos he's done, he presents a months-long chronicle of the changes on one downtown Portland block. See "View from above" on Page 26. is issue also features lists of Maine's largest engi- neering firms (on Page 27) and Maine's largest architec- ture firms (on Page 34). Peter Van Allen pvanallen@mainebiz.biz Maine's real estate now in a constant state of change The pandemic drove people out of cities and into Maine. But changes in the workplace are now changing Maine's office space.

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