Maine Medical Center Now Owns Portland’s Greyhound Station

Maine Health, the parent company of Maine Medical Center has been buying up a lot of property around the hospital. Their latest acquisition is the Greyhound bus station on Congress Street.

Maine Medical Center is in the early stages of a half a billion dollar modernization and expansion and in that process they have bought a lot of real estate around Maine Med in the past few years.

A new staff parking garage was built on the site of a former train yard behind the old Maine Central Railroad offices on St. John Street. The site was converted to a parking lot decades ago after Portland's Union Station was demolished. The only remnants of that yard that remained, a former rail control tower converted to a business, was torn down to make way for the parking garage.

Maine Health also bought the building that the famous Pizza Villa had been in for over 50 years. The former owners sold the building to Maine Health and thankfully, the new Pizza Villa owners are still there.

Maine Health's most recent purchase was the Greyhound Station at the corner of Congress and St. John Streets. According to the Portland Press Herald, there are currently no plans for the station to close, despite the spot being a prime bit of real estate in a city that is developing in the blink of an eye.

The building has been at the corner since 1961 when Union Station still stood right across the street during the decline of passenger rail travel. This area was, and still it in some ways, the gateway to downtown Portland.

There's no word yet about what, if anything will happen to the station. If it should be replaced with some new development, coming into downtown Portland after getting off at the Congress Street exit of I-295 will never be the same without seeing that big Greyhound logo painted on the brick building.