For more than 30 years, Cito Selinger has been a leader in helping clients envision, develop, finance and operate affordable housing and community redevelopment projects throughout Maine. Cito represents developers, lenders and investors and is lead counsel in multimillion dollar projects using a combination of financing vehicles such as the low income housing tax credit, historic tax credit (federal and state) and conventional commercial financing. He is a licensed title agent with several national title insurers.
Prior to joining the firm, Cito worked at another large firm in Portland and served as law clerk to former Chief Justice Daniel E. Wathen and the late Justice David A. Nichols of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
Cito’s community activities generally relate to housing and social services. He is a member and past President of the Board of Directors of Preble Street, currently chairing its Investment Committee. He received Preble Street’s “Board Member of the Year” award several years ago. Cito served for many years on the Board of Directors of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, was President and Secretary-Treasurer and remains active in that organization. Cito has received numerous Preservation Honor Awards from Maine Preservation and Greater Portland Landmarks for his role as counsel in landmark redevelopment projects throughout Maine. In 2003, Cito received the Hope Award from Shalom House, in recognition of his community service in affordable housing for mental health consumers. Cito also served for nine years as a Trustee of the Freeport Historical Society.
Cito was named the Best Lawyers® 2015 Real Estate Law “Lawyer of the Year” in Portland, ME and was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers In America 2022 in the fields of Real Estate and Project Finance Law.
In his spare time, Cito heads off on hiking expeditions or works on restoring a camp originally built in 1909 on the shores of a lake in western Maine.
Contact Info
Practice Areas
- Real Estate
- General Business, Corporate and Finance
Education
- J.D.,—Georgetown University Law Center
- B.A., English—Bowdoin College
Bar Admissions and Memberships
- Maine
- Maine State Bar Association
Representative Matters
- Represented the lead institutional lender, Newburyport Five Cents Savings Bank; and the State historic tax credit investor, 30 Federal Street Investments, LLC, in a $60 million redevelopment of the Lincoln Mill, a large historic marquee downtown mill building in Biddeford, Maine. The building will be redeveloped into apartments, a restaurant, hotel and fitness club.
- Local counsel in the acquisition and redevelopment of the historic Portland Press Herald building in Portland, Maine, a $25 million project financed with New Markets tax credits and federal and state historic tax credits.
- Represented Maine’s largest nonprofit developer of affordable housing in connection with its acquisition, financing and development of a “Housing First” project that included an emergency shelter, a “safe haven” dormitory and twenty-five apartments in Portland that involved a combination of low income housing tax credits, FedHome subsidies from the State and City of Portland, and Federal Home Loan Bank Affordable Housing Program direct subsidy.