Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Headquarters

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) is renovating and expanding its headquarters to consolidate staff and services currently spread across several offices.

The project preserves the historic exterior façade of an existing three-story brick building while completely rebuilding the interior with all new structural steel, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection systems, and an entirely new layout. The 16,500-square-foot renovation is flanked by two new three-story additions totaling 27,000 square feet, along with an 8,750-square-foot detached storage barn, bringing the total facility to more than 50,000 square feet of renovated and new space. The finished headquarters will house more than 100 individual offices, four laboratories, eight conference rooms, and specialized spaces including a museum, an AV room, and four kitchens.

The two additions rely on mass timber construction, incorporating Southern Yellow Pine glue-laminated (glulam) columns and beams alongside cross-laminated timber (CLT) for floors, roofs, elevator shafts, and stair towers. Structural steel and slab-on-deck construction round out the hybrid system, which uses approximately 175,000 board feet of CLT and 72,000 board feet of glulam.

A geothermal heating and cooling system works alongside the mass timber structure to reduce the building’s environmental footprint and support the project’s pursuit of LEED Silver certification.

Once complete, the renovated and expanded headquarters will provide a modern, energy-efficient workspace for research, collaboration, and public engagement for decades to come.