Carrie Jones

Sep 16, 2025

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BAR HARBOR—Plans to rebuild the currently broken Glen Mary Pool will likely need to be tweaked after costs for the previous proposal came in too high this past July.

During the Parks and Recreation committee’s September 15 meeting, member John Kelly questioned the town’s review process if those tweaks occur. Kelly is one of five people currently on the committee. It generally meets once a month.

Much of the committee’s duties are as an advisory committee, much like the town’s harbor committee, and the parks and recreation committee makes recommendations to the town council about issues such as the Glen Mary Pool project or town parks. It also approves permits for use of town parks and memorial benches.

The wading pool at Glen Mary Park (located on 7.5 acres off Glen Mary Road and Waldron Road) has been closed since 2022 due to broken piping beneath the ground. Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt has previously said the system was last upgraded in 2009, which was before Leavitt’s time in Bar Harbor. A plan by LARK Studio was unveiled at a committee meeting in May 2024. In July 2024, the Bar Harbor Town Council gave a general nod for the approval of the conceptual layout for the return of the beloved wading pool.

Kelly said there’d recently been a lot of emails about the pool.

The committee’s opinion about the project had already advanced to the council, so the project tweaks will likely not go back to the committee, but stay at the council level, Town Manager James Smith said.

“After I have had an opportunity to meet with the VIA and determine what the next steps need to be, I’ll be happy to get the VIA on an agenda to provide the council and the public an update,” Smith wrote in an email to a Bar Harbor resident on Monday.

Those councils meetings are televised, taped, and open to the public for both attendance and comment.

On Monday, Kelly said that he viewed the process as fluid and if there are changes, the committee should be part of reviewing any changes.

Smith said Monday night that he has not yet met with the Village Improvement Association (VIA) about the newest potential changes, but that he plans to do so and together they’ll determine next steps. The council will be involved and there will be opportunity for public comment again.

The project has multiple moving parts. The town manages the pool and the woods in the residential area, however, the property belongs to the Village Improvement Association, a nonprofit that also takes care of the Shore Path, DeGregoire Green, the Village Green, and other various outdoor spaces in town.

The association has come up with the plans for the revitalization and rebuild of the pool

In an email to a member of the public Monday morning, Smith, and Kelly, David Witham, who is in charge of the project for the VIA, wrote, “Yes, a lot has been happening behind the scenes and there have been continuous efforts to push this project forward.

“Upon completion of the construction documents in July, the project went out to bid and the numbers were unfortunately beyond what we felt were attainable through fundraising and grants. We then went right back to the drawing board after several meetings with the design team and identified areas to create savings. The project was redesigned to reflect these changes and the plans have just recently gone back out to the contractor to rebid the numbers.”

Witham said in the letter that the VIA remains hopeful that revised costs will allow them to start a fundraising effort in earnest.

VIA President Dick Cough confirmed that Tuesday morning.

“Yes, costs keep escalating beyond our financial capabilities so we keep going back to the drawing board to see what we can cut out or downsize without affecting the important elements of the project,” he said.

Cough also confirmed that the VIA hopes to meet with town representatives in the next few weeks to work on downsizing the project, and seeing where the project stands on cost estimates, potential grants, and getting the fundraising started.

“Please trust that we all would have hoped that this would be further along than it is despite our best efforts. The reality of the construction industry at this time is that everything takes twice as long as we all anticipate with the current shortage of engineers and contractors,” Witham wrote.

Since Glen Mary pool had last been upgraded, many things have changed such as new life safety codes and ADA regulations. Also, because the ground is so low lying and the water table so high in that area, the groundwork and engineering that needs to be done was more than initially anticipated. The VIA has had to pull together a team of engineers, electrical engineers, site engineers, and hydrology experts due to the water tables in the area.

“It’s a little concerning,” Kelly said.

Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt said during the meeting that she isn’t sure what the project looks like currently or what—if any—tweaks had been made. She said that she’d address the concerns raised by Kelly with Smith and the VIA. She said she believes that the VIA has multiple options before it.

Kelly said that because of potential changes, he feels like the project is still under development and he’d like the Parks and Recreation Committee to be involved.

The committee gave much early input into the project and the VIA has been busy trying to design it for a reasonable cost. The town needs to make sure that it can maintain and keep the pool running, Leavitt said, once the plans are finalized.

“It’s been a labor of love for them,” Smith said of the VIA, which has also rebuilt the Shore Path, which had been devastated by winter storms and recently reopened.

Committee Vice Chair Jeff Dobbs, who is also on the VIA board said that he thought that if asked, Cough, would likely come and talk to the committee again.

The first recognized meeting of the VIA was held on November 4, 1881.

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