ROCKLAND — As the City of Rockland announced its choice for ownership of the former McLain School elementary building, talk eventually segued to the future of the building next door. Known to some as the Lincoln Street Center, filled with artist studios, developer Kevin Bunker was a student of the landmark when it was a junior high school. Today, Bunker calls the building underutilized in the economic sense, wanting to continue along with Rockland's desire for affordable housing, but softened his stance after a walk-through with his new McLain School partner.

Having been granted an Options Agreement for McLain School, 28 Lincoln Street, in a May 12, 4-1 vote (Kalloch), Bunker’s affordable housing firm, Developers Collaborative, in partnership with Lake City Holdings, will carry forth on renovating the 1894 brick elementary school and constructing a new structure in the adjacent lot at 82 Summer Street.

However, "there’s this building next door which is kindof the unspoken elephant in the room, what’s going to happen to that building," said Bunker. "It is true that this proposal that we submitted was carefully designed to not be contingent upon anything that we might choose to do there."

McLain Building, 28 Lincoln Street: 2 adjoining parcels, spanning approximately 3 quarters of an acre.

For the McLain Building, Developers Collaborative and Lake City Holdings propose two scenarios, which would either result in 29 or 44 units.

One scenario would use the property as it exists today. The other scenario would add a little bit of undeveloped land from the Lincoln Street Center property, which they control with a purchase and sale agreement.

“Some of the things that make it really attractive [to develop] also make it really challenging to repurpose as housing that’s affordable," said Julie Hashem, Community Development Director for the City of Rockland. 

In both scenarios, the assumption is for around 17 units in the McLain School “and then you need the new building to make it all cost-effective,” said Bunker, leading to the question of how many units in the new building. New construction would be designed at 2.5 stories so the roofline and view from Summer Street would fit the neighborhood.

The developers are proposing a mix of 0, 1, 2, 3 bedroom units, with rents at the low end, $875, and at the high end, $1400. In a 1-person household, that’s $35,000 - $42,000 annually.

“So, more than minimum wage. Just over,” said Hashem. “These are the working folks. The folks who are in retail stores. Restaurants. Some of the entry-level City employees. Admin staff, entry-level workers at the hospital. Boat yards and manufacturing.”

Amenities will include a community room with kitchenette, and accessible laundry.

A Resident Service Coordinator, a standard MaineHousing Authority requirement, is also on the list. The amount of hours per week the RCS is on site is determined by a formula based on how many units are in the building, according to Bunker. Generally it works out to 10, 12, or 13 hours a week.

“It’s not so much that the residence service coordinator is directly providing services to the residents themselves,” said Bunker. “But it’s sort of like a high level case worker and coordinating them with resources in the community and helping them kind of trouble shoot issues as opposed to delving deep into any one tenant’s particular problems or issues they might have. Generally designed to help them be successful tenants so that...we do financial counseling, smoking cessation. Often have food programs or will have relationships with a food bank or a Hannaford. Have resident events, ‘light services just to make it a little more vibrant.’

In terms of parking, the average is one car per unit.

“Based on our history, that’s probably going to be enough,” said Bunker.

Hashem followed by saying: “That’s quite a lot more than our zoning would require.”

The developers also have parking easement along the front of the Lincoln Street property.

The City received three RFQs. One didn’t fit the scope of the RFQ, suggesting a City-owned self-governing cooperative living center, according to Hashem.

One envisioned the City as co-developer, creating a for-profit subsidiary and for the City to have an ongoing ownership interest and responsibility for the property.

Rockland opted for the third submission, which was not only more traditional, but because it maximized the potential for rental units on site; offered the longest affordability period; provided more detail in the proposal, showing that they’d done some initial math, initial layout; had the capacity to apply to MaineHousing financing this fall; and proposed a target availability for units of May 2028 – a full year ahead of the competing proposal.

Lincoln Street Center, 24 Lincoln Street

When eyes started looking next door, Bunker, known for converting old buildings into housing, specifically old schools, had initially envisioned housing for the Lincoln Street Center, (former junior high), as well.

“I could easily envision what I could do with that building, which is to give it 50 more years of life with all new materials and preserve the history of it, reinvigurate it as housing," he said.

Yet, during the May 5, 2025 Rockland City Council agenda-setting meeting, he acknowledged a new outlook on the Lincoln Street Center after seeing the “amazing things going on in there.”

“Part of me hesitates at [not following the housing route] because I’ve come across a lot of old buildings, and old schools in particular, where there have been lots of visions of lots of things, and they end up not happening, and they end up redeveloping them,” said Bunker. “I’ve seen the end game, but I’ve also seen people be successful in that. I think that it is pretty unique and it is the only artist space available, at that rate. It’s hard to say that the housing crisis is so extreme that you should eliminate the only artist studios.

Bunker continued, “I think in the end, what we decided that we would do would be to give them the opportunity to purchase the building at a very small premium to what we have it under contract for. They would have a pretty short time in which they would have to raise the money. But, it would turn them pretty quickly from people wondering if they can control their own destiny at the whims of capitalists, for lack of a better word, whether it be the current property owner or us, …..and they would have the ability, essentially, to become that themselves.”

In the meantime

Bunker is completing his senior housing project on Maverick Street. He will start the process of applying for MaineHousing grants, City TIFs and historic registry tax breaks, while also working with the city attorney on what the options agreement would look like. Rockland will be exploring with the developers the possibility of income averaging.

Reach Sarah Thompson at news@penbaypilot.com