Emergency Room Access Will Only Be Via Hancock Street

Carrie Jones

Aug 27, 2025

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Window Panes Home and Garden.

---

BAR HARBOR—Television producer and philanthropist Dick Wolf has gifted a $10 million lead gift for Mount Desert Island Hospital’s Building Our Future campaign.

“MDI Hospital is a cornerstone of this community,” Wolf said. “I’m proud to help ensure that the people of Mount Desert Island and beyond have access to the best possible care, now, and for generations to come.”

The $55 million campaign is meant to modernize MDI Hospital’s campus. According to a hospital press release, August 27, “The project will nearly double the size of the Emergency Department, add advanced surgical and diagnostic capabilities, improve patient flow and privacy, and create flexible space to meet evolving healthcare needs.”

“This extraordinary contribution—the largest from an individual in the hospital’s history—will accelerate construction of a new, state-of-the-art Emergency Department, upgraded surgical suites, and a welcoming new Main Street entrance,” the hospital wrote.

“Dick Wolf’s generosity is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Chrissi Maguire, MDI Hospital President and CEO. “This gift not only advances our vision for a modern, patient-centered campus, it inspires others to join us in building a healthier future for our island community.”

The public launch of the community phase of the campaign will be tonight at the Bar Harbor Club.

There will be just two ways to enter the Mount Desert Island Hospital campus through December 2025 due to the construction and expansion project on its Bar Harbor campus.

The hospital is located at 10 Wayman Lane. It has traditionally been accessed via three streets. The emergency room will no longer be accessed from Wayman Lane. It will only be accessible through Hancock Street.

The construction is part of a $55 million dollar effort to modernize and expand that Bar Harbor campus in downtown proper. The emergency department will be new and there will upgrades to surgical suites as well as infrastructure.

The town’s design review board had quickly had a portable traffic sign deemed appropriate earlier this August. The sign is intended to help direct traffic around the hospital during its construction project.

During the town’s paving project on Main St, they closed Wayman Lane to traffic.

At that time, the hospital borrowed the town’s portable traffic sign to help direct emergency and regular patients to the most direct route to its Emergency Department, according to the submission.

“As we move forward with our campus plan, we purchased our own sign identical to the town’s, in order to continue to direct Emergency and regular patients to the most direct route to our entrance and ED as they change over the duration of the project,” the application said.

The board unanimously approved two so that if things changed, the hospital would not have to come back to the board. It will be moved whenever it’s needed.

According to the hospital, the following is how to access the campus:

Campus Access & Parking

• If you enter the campus by vehicle via Hancock Street, you will need to exit via Hancock Street.
• If you enter the campus by vehicle via Wayman Lane, you will need to exit via Wayman Lane.
• There is no through traffic on Stanwood—access is for parking only.
• Parking by the Wayman Lane entrance provides access to the Hospital Main Entrance and Registration.
• Parking by the Hancock Street entrance provides access to Cooper Gilmore Health Center, MRI, the Breast Health Center, and direct access to the Emergency Department.
  • If you need to go directly to the Emergency Department, you will need to enter using Hancock Street. There will be Emergency signage posted.
  • This is the most important distinction – direct ED drop off and pedestrian access will be from Hancock. It will not be directly accessible from Wayman during this time.

---

ANNUAL MEETING AND BUSINESS CELEBRATION

The hospital’s annual meeting is tonight, Wednesday, August 27, at the Bar Harbor Club. The campaign launch and community celebration is 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

The business meeting runs 3:30 – 4:00 p.m. and can be watched via Zoom.
If you’d like to attend the Annual Business meeting please email mariah.cormier@mdihospital.org to be emailed the Zoom details.

---

ABOUT DICK WOLF

Dick Wolf, one of the most successful producers in the history of television, is the creator and executive producer of the “Law & Order” branded series, which includes television’s two longest-running drama series: NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU” (27 seasons) and “Law & Order (25 seasons). Wolf is a two-time Emmy winner for “Law & Order” and HBO’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” and has been nominated 13 times. He also won a Grammy for the Doors documentary “When You’re Strange” and his company produced the Oscar-winning Documentary Short Film “Twin Towers.” Wolf and his eponymous Wolf Entertainment’s current series also include “Law & Order: Organized Crime” (Peacock), NBC’s “Chicago Fire” (season 14), “Chicago PD” (season 13) and “Chicago Med” (season 11); Prime Video’s “On Call” and CBS’ “FBI” (season 8) and the new Fall 2025 entry “CIA.” His other successful network series include: CBS’ “FBI: Most Wanted” and “FBI: International” which recently wrapped six and four season runs; “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “New York Undercover.” Non scripted hit series include Oxygen’s “Cold Justice,” Netflix’s “Homicide: NY and LA,” and A&E’s “Nightwatch.” Wolf Entertainment is also expanding with a robust podcast slate including “Hunted,” “Dark Woods” and “Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer,” and Wolf Games, a new venture aimed at engaging true crime fans.

Wolf is a New York Times bestselling author (“The Intercept,” “The Execution” and “The Ultimatum”) and has received numerous personal accolades including: the Television Academy Hall of Fame; the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Lifetime Achievement Award; the Producer’s Guild of America’s Norman Lear Showmanship Award; the DGA Honors; the Monte Carlo Television Festival Gold Nymph Award (Wolf is Honorary Consul to the Principality); the Award of Excellence from the Banff Television Festival and in 2007 he received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Wolf’s philanthropy is unparalleled. He is the founder and benefactor (with Marcy Carsey) of the Carsey-Wolf Center for Media at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and other significant endowments include: the Wolf Theater at the Television Academy and the Academy’s Dick Wolf Internship Program; MOXI, the Wolf Museum of Exploration and Innovation, UPenn’s Wolf Humanities Center; USC’s Dick Wolf School of Drama and his transformative promised gift of more than 200 works to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for the museum’s collections of Renaissance and Baroque art.

---

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

The campus improvement project updates are here.

Link about the annual meeting is here.

---

Follow us on Facebook or BlueSky or Instagram. And as a reminder, you can easily view all our past stories and press releases here.

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 for being here with us and caring about our community, too!Subscribed

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 (about how you can give) or here (a direct link), which is the same as the button below.

To support The Story

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

Leave a comment

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR COMMUNITY