Planning Board Unanimously Recommends Comprehensive Plan

Carrie Jones

Mar 11, 2025

Share

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.

BAR HARBOR—Trying to create more housing in Bar Harbor, which is already the largest population on Mount Desert Island, isn’t going to be easy, the town’s planning board agreed last week.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Bar Harbor Housing and Community Planner Cali Martinez said, during a planning board meeting, Thursday. “It’s going to take a lot of collaboration in order to combat the really big issues we have to deal with.

“Collaboration and money,” J. Clark Stivers, planning board secretary and former town councilor said.

A thriving community was the main value Martinez presented in her housing update and it was referenced by Bar Harbor Planning Board Vice Chair Ruth Eveland.

“People have to be willing to make accommodations,” Eveland said, to allow the community to be more of a community.

Exactly what accommodations has not been parsed out yet, but there was mention of peeling away some current height restrictions on buildings in some zones as well as increasing lot density, so buildings might be taller than they are now and a piece of land might be able to have more built on it. Opponents of increased lot density changes, historically, say that it reduces green space as well as reduces land that allows ground water permeation. Opponents of taller buildings say that taller buildings change a community’s character and impact neighboring buildings’ sunlight, property value, and can cause noise pollution.

Rockland, a city down the coast, has been on the forefront of municipality-driven efforts to increase housing in Maine. Its newest effort is a $10 million bond proposal, that Rockland councilor Adam Lachman told the Bangor Daily News’ Zara Norman would allow “the cost of building new housing in Rockland to be more financially viable than anywhere else in the state” if the proposal is approved by Rockland voters.

“The bond proposal is the latest in a slew of efforts Rockland officials have put forward to alleviate its housing shortage. The city was the first in Maine to eliminate density restrictions on most land. It allowed in-law apartments on any single-family lot, slashed residential parking requirements, cut permitting fees for affordable projects, and partnered with mall plaza owners to embrace all types of housing before a state law mandated some of those changes,” the Bangor Daily writes.

Lachman told the BDN that “untenable” costs of building coupled with high interest rates is keeping development from happening.

Bar Harbor Planning Director Michele Gagnon said last Thursday that not finding a place to live or affording a place to live is not just happening on the island. It’s everywhere.

“Every time their lease goes up, they are so nervous,” Bar Harbor Planner Hailey Bondy said, speaking of her friends, who are younger. “It’s terrifying. A significant number of people are dealing with that.”

Speaking from the audience, Bar Harbor businessman and former planning board chair, Tom St.Germain said the council gave an attractive incentive to the YWCA’s project and suggested it be made into a written town policy where building permit fees are returned to housing projects.

“That alone would create an incentive that developers decided to go down the route to build housing,” St.Germain said.

St.Germain said he’s filled out an application to be on the town’s new sustainable tourism task force, but he intends to attend planning board discussions. He said he applauded the efforts to gather data, which he said he and others advocated for.

Part of the initiation of the lodging moratorium discussion was the suggestion that transient accommodations knocked down homes, but the hospital has knocked down homes as well, he said. The parking and traffic issues on the hospital’s Main Street site were accepted as part of the necessity of having a hospital there. He hoped that transient accommodations got the same sort of consideration.

The easiest way to achieve greater density is to go up, St.Germain said. The two districts with the lowest allowable heights are downtown village 1 and downtown village 2. He said that was a reaction that occurred when taller lodging was built.

Because of their heights, the West Street Hotel on West Street and the Bar Harbor Grand Hotel on Main Street worried neighbors and others when they were built.

---

COMPREHENSIVE PLAN RECOMMENDED

Housing didn’t expressly come up at the planning board’s Monday night meeting, which lasted less than 10 minutes. During the meeting, the board unanimously recommended the town’s proposed 2035 Bar Harbor Comprehensive Plan.

The plan is meant to create a vision and guide for actions for Bar Harbor’s future. It has multiple sections that deal with the plan’s theme and frameworks, and implementation, and it explains a vision of Bar Harbor today and tomorrow.

More than 200 people participated in past engagement, Martinez has said previously. One woman spoke on Monday.

Mary Donnelly, Town Hill, said it was a great report, however, “I don’t see it as a plan. I wish it was a plan.”

Hailey Bondy, staff planner, thanked the comprehensive planning committee and its chair Greg Cox, for the “hours and hours” of work.

“Great job. Really, great job,” Dority said.

There was no discussion.

“We have all weighed in previously,” Eveland said.

The board unanimously recommended the plan.

There are multiple issues that shaped the plan’s direction, including:

• “The impacts of both housing and labor shortages across Mount Desert Island.
• “The limited land available for future development, which influences how Bar Harbor meets its future housing, economic, and infrastructure needs.
• “The cost implications of sprawling development, which is prevalent in portions of town.
• “Infrastructure investments that are needed to support future development activity.
• “The impacts of over-tourism and over-crowding throughout the community.
• “The lack of revenue, as a small community, to meet the expectations and needs of residents and visitors alike.”

---

HOUSING UPDATE AND REPORT

The best thing the town can do is to work within the system to benefit the community in the ways that it needs, Martinez said during the board’s meeting last Thursday.

The town needs to preserve its affordable units and build new units to meet a diversity of needs, planning staff said.

Each demographic within the town has different preferences, needs, and budgets, Martinez said.

Three areas create a balancing act: thriving community, unique character and identity, and fiscal responsibility, she said.

People need to tolerate change and invest in the future. This would be a gradual process, Martinez said, with efforts building off each other and also run in parallel.

In that process, Martinez identified basic steps as defining affordability, removing zoning and regulatory barriers, developing a housing fund, and increasing public-private partnerships.

Planning board member Teresa Wagner asked if areas like Bar Harbor—amenity trap communities—have been able to do this with financial barriers.

How do you build housing when other property types are more profitable, Wagner asked.

“Part of what we’re trying to work with all the different avenues that create that housing story,” Gagnon said. She spoke of other industries that dominated other towns in Maine. The people who get pushed out of their homes are those with the lowest incomes. Stivers said he couldn’t think of ten buildings in town that could have a floor added.

“We know that we need 622 housing units,” Gagnon said.

And, she said, the town knows that it won’t all happen in Bar Harbor. However, she said, if the town doesn’t address a portion of that need, the congestion on the bridge onto the island will only get worse.

The town has to change zoning to allow people to build housing when they want to. The town’s zoning is mostly exclusionary.

“We have to continue trying to make it happen,” she said.

Bar Harbor planning board member Guy Dunphey questioned how to entice more year-round businesses for year round residents. “It’s always been an unaffordable place to live.”

“It was always out of reach. You always felt like you were always out of reach,” Dunphey said. “And that’s from the ‘70s.”

Finding housing is going to be a continual fight and it’s going to require people with means to create high-density housing and it’s going to have to be high-density housing. It’s not going to be single family housing, he said.

“Exactly,” said Martinez.

---

BAR HARBOR LOBSTER POUND AND WHISPERING BROOK REQUESTS

The Bar Harbor Lobster Pound restaurant’s application for its restaurant and parking expansion was discussed and the planning board decided it would have a site visit.

Roger St. Armand represented A&B Aquatics, which owns the property. It purchased the take-out restaurant in 2022.

“They find they need more space,” St. Armand said.

They want to get parking away from Route 3, have a lobster storage tank and second building for seating.

The proposed building would go next to the current building. The proposed parking would add another 23 spaces. A new waste water system would be located behind the restaurant. Storm water retention is proposed off the end of the new parking area.

It would still be a takeout and the new building would allow inside seating.

During public comment, Scott Hewes of 24 Stonybrook Way, said that he was concerned about noise coming from the open deck on the second floor filtering back behind the restaurant and was worried about vernal pools and streams if there were any in the area.

The current seasonal hours of operation are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

WHISPERING BROOK SUBDIVISION

Robert Burgdorf’s Whispering Brook subdivision on Whispering Brook Road. The subdivision divided multiple pieces of the lot to others in the Indian Point rural district.

The minor subdivision modification came to the town because the property owners in the subdivision were able to purchase a lot behind them. They were worried that the lot behind them would be developed and impact the existing forest and landscape.

---

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

On November 20, 2024, the Planning Department introduced the Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The event was live streamed and recorded.

Meeting recording: https://townhallstreams.com/stream.php?location_id=37&id=62664

Presentation slides: /DocumentCenter/View/7875/Bar-Harbor-2035-Presentation-slides-112124

Draft Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan and Accompanying Documents: https://www.barharbormaine.gov/501/Comprehensive-Plan

Contact Information:

If you have comments or questions on the Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan, call the Planning Office at 288-3329 or email planner@barharbormaine.gov.

To watch the meeting

---

Applications for Sustainable Tourism Management Task Force due March 21

The Town Council is set to appoint members to the new Sustainable Tourism Management Task Force at its April 15 meeting.

Anyone interested in serving is encouraged to complete an Application to Serve on Boards and Committees (available below or from the Town Clerk’s Office). Completed applications are due to the Town Clerk’s office by 5 p.m. March 21. Interviews with the Council’s Appointments Committee will be in early April and applicants will be asked to bring a written definition of “sustainable tourism” to their interview.

• Application to Serve on Boards and Committees
• Appointments Policy
• Sustainable Tourism Management Task Force Bylaws

Contact 288-4098 with any questions.

---

Follow us on Facebook.

Bar Harbor Story is a mostly self-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you so much for being here with us and for caring about Bar Harbor!

Thanks for reading Bar Harbor Story ! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here.

If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.