New Developer Takes on Old Mill
- March 7th 2025
- Business Spotlight
The Stenton Mill as it looked in 2021
File photo
By Lee Burnett
A developer with a long track record of redeveloping historic mill buildings in New England has signed a purchase and sale agreement to redevelop the long vacant Stenton Mill on River Street.
Eric Chinburg, whose Newington, N.H.-based company is already redeveloping the Jagger Mill in Springvale, plans to develop at least 100 housing units, according to Keith McBride, executive director of the Sanford Regional Economic Growth Council. There are no plans for first-floor commercial space. Chinburg has redeveloped mills in Biddeford and Saco as well as in New Hampshire communities of Portsmouth, Dover and Exeter.
“He has a great portfolio of projects,” McBride said.
Chinbrug is the second company to propose redevelopment of the mill, which has been vacant for two decades. In 2017, one of two towers of the mill burned in spectacular fashion. WinnCompanies proposed and then abandoned redevelopment of the remaining tower in 2023 with significant financing from Maine Housing, which provides low-interest financing for projects that advance affordable housing goals.
McBride said he can’t comment on Chinburg’s financing package, except to say Chinburg has used historic tax credits on prior projects and that could be practical in this case. The site is relatively clean from the city’s investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars of EPA Brownfields funding to investigate and clean up residual industrial contamination, he said.
McBride said the redevelopment process is still early but he’s “cautiously optimistic.”
