Bar Harbor Planners Dig Into Parking, Housing, and Lodging in Moratorium Talks
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Window Panes Home and Garden.
BAR HARBOR—Some planning board members who spoke during the planning board lodging moratorium workshop, September 22, worried that homes were being lost to parking lots—lots that are often required by town code for lodging uses.
The town board, which has been tasked with making a recommendation to the town council due to a lodging moratorium, is not the first to worry about parking requirements’ potential impact on communities.
Opponents of parking requirements for lodging or other commercial businesses—or even housing—often cite that making sure that buildings require parking can take up land that could be better used, increase asphalt and impermeable surfaces within a town, increase the cost to build, and other issues.
During the September 22 meeting, Planning Board Chair Millard Dority asked town staff if the town has lost at least two or three apartments and at least 11 or 12 single-family dwellings to parking areas.
“It’s pretty stunning,” Dority said. “Something we should take a hard look at is parking.”
Planning board member Teresa Wagner said she was also shocked at that data which was revealed during a moratorium workshop earlier in September.
Planning board member Guy Dunphey asked if it was parking due to lodging or due to other requirements. Lodging is required to have parking in downtown Bar Harbor.
Since 2007, there have been 37 units in Bar Harbor that were changed to lodging, commercial, or mixed uses, or lost to become a parking lot; 66 percent were single-family homes and 29 percent were apartments.
For years, Dority said, the town has managed development primarily through three tools: building height, lot coverage, and parking spaces required for the property’s use.
Though the two-hour, afternoon workshop was meant to be about the moratorium, it delved into multiple other issues connected to land use and development and economy.
WHAT IS THE MORATORIUM ABOUT?
Back in February, the town council voted to enact a 180-day moratorium on most lodging types. That vote came after emergency moratoriums had been enacted on lodging.
Since then, the town’s planning board and staff have been working to collect data relevant to the “whereas” clauses in that moratorium.
In September 2023, the town’s attorney Stephen W. Wagner (of Rudman Winchell) explained that a moratorium is “essentially a pause on development.”
To do that pause, the councilors make certain findings: that the moratorium is necessary to stop a burden on public facilities and other aspects; that the existing comprehensive plan is inadequate to do so. The whereas clauses serve as those findings.
In June 2025, the town voted to update its comprehensive plan.
According to the most recent moratorium, its purpose “is to allow the town sufficient time to:
- “Evaluate the concerns raised about the anticipated or proposed development of certain transient accommodations and assess the adequacy of existing land use ordinances (data and analysis),
- “Assess the adequacy of existing land use ordinances and regulations, and to develop new ordinances, if necessary, to ensure protection for the health, safety, welfare, land use compatibility, environmental compatibility, and the well-being of all residents and visitors in the Town of Bar Harbor (develop regulatory policies and regulations to address issues of infrastructure, public safety, environmental impacts, and land use compatibility),
- “Hold at least one public hearing and one community engagement event to gather input from residents, business owners, and other stakeholders (public engagement), and
- “The Town Council may consider a reduction of the moratorium to allow for adjustments (size, scope, or duration) if conditions improved or the moratorium’s original intent is partially resolved.”
THE LATEST WORKSHOP
“We’re here to delve into this—to dive into it,” Dority told the board, September 22, as the board members asked staff questions and discussed their own concerns and tried to narrow down their next steps.
“I know people want to talk and there’s opportunity today,” Dority said.
“Clearly, the people around the table kind of agree to what are the issues,” Bar Harbor Planning Director Michele Gagnon said.
Those issues discussed Monday ranged from parking requirements, tourism, seasonal communities and homes, definitions, and waste systems.
Dunphey worried that some of the septic systems in residential areas were aging and the impact of that on the town and the environment.
Gagnon said the town is looking at a survey of the septic systems in one residential area and has applied for a grant to survey septic systems in all of Bar Harbor.
“Look at how far we’ve come from the old days when we’ve dealt with sewage,” Dority said. Rules and regulations have changed in major ways, he said.
“For every room lost, we’ve had roughly seven rooms gained,” one member said of the town’s numbers. “Even though lodging over time has decreased, we are still accumulating lodging.”
Wagner said it has been a 13% growth in guest rooms in the last 14 years.
Dunphey asked about the comparison of the numbers for net lodgings. There were eight new and four losses, but the ratio of build-out was a two-to-one build-out.
“We want to look at parking. We want to take a look at sub-surface sewage treatment,” Dority said.
HOUSING AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE MORATORIUM
The group also discussed the relationship of housing to the overall moratorium.
Lodging, currently, brings more income on a lot than a home, it was said, so there’s more incentive to build that.
“We haven’t done anything for housing, so what do we expect?” Dority said. “It makes sense that there would be more lodging.”
Wagner said that lodging affects the single-family housing negatively due to need for parking spaces and for seasonal employees (and places to house them).
Code Enforcement Officer Michael Gurtler said there have been increases in housing in town as well as work on the issue. Currently, the town is working with Acadia National Park on a Town Hill parcel that could potentially have a maximum build-out of 60 homes.
“We did pass a land use ordinance amendment that did increase” housing opportunities via accessory dwelling units, Gurtler added about the town’s efforts.
He also said that seasonal housing is still housing. “You could say that visiting nurses are seasonal housing, but we need them, too.”
Vice Chair Ruth Eveland said it all boils down to whether or not there is a need or a want for more lodging.
The discussion delved into a question of if the town wants to have policy that favors housing or policy that favors lodging? It also delved into the participation of year-round residents’ and seasonal residents’ in “the larger life of the community.”
“We can’t pit lodging against housing,” Dority said.
Wagner said it might not be an intention to pit them against each other, but there’s only so much space in the town and that it becomes a natural tension.
Similarly, Planning Board Secretary J. Clark Stivers had said there are only a certain number of places to build anything and any time there is a new lodging, that place, generally, can’t be a residence.
“The whole point of the moratorium is to put the brakes on a specific kind of housing—the lodging housing,” Eveland said.
The comprehensive plan is focused on the year-round community, Eveland said, and later added that the seasonal community and economic activity benefits the year-round community.
“We’re all community members. Some of us are lucky enough to live here,” and some aren’t lucky, Dority said, but those people who are in town year after year for certain months of the year are still part of the community.
“A lot of people love this place who don’t own property and they are really nice,” Dority said.
He added that there are towns quite near Bar Harbor who would die to have a 13% increase in the lodging.
Eveland said she was the first to admit that seasonal people helped build the town generations ago.
TOURISM TALK AND GUEST ROOMS
The group also skirted around the issues of congestion downtown and tourism.
“I think there’s an underlying value that we want to limit the amount of tourists coming here. Imagine if we were a small town that wanted to manage and grow that; this wouldn’t be an issue. I think it’s because theres a feeling in this room and in this community that we want to limit tourism and limit tourists,” Housing and Community Planner Cali Martinez said, that could potentially lead the town to limit people in hotels.
Wagner said her worries about the guest room definition was more a manner of understanding the language and having it be consistent with what residents expect so that people aren’t surprised when a 40-room lodging is called a bed and breakfast, though that project matches the definition the town had for bed and breakfast on the site of a dilapidated garage.
“We’ve had things that come as surprises for us,” Wagner said.
Gurtler said that the same definition and reaction had happened years before the project Wagner was referencing.
“Lodging does not bring people into town. The park brings people into town. The media brings people into town. The experience brings people into town. People on cruise ships come back, right?” Gurtler said, referencing Acadia National Park, which had approximately 4 million visits last year. “In my mind, having more housing or more places for people to stay is beneficial for people to stay to the town in that we have less traffic, less parking issues, right, because they have a place to go and they can leave their car there because they’re required to have parking.”
Dority said that possibly the parking requirements force businesses to buy extra housing or lots for parking.
Gurtler said the town could require lodging to only provide parking on their own lots and not other properties.
According to the town’s land use ordinance, parking is required for certain uses in different zones. These are detailed in the land use ordinance for different districts as well as within the site plan review details for the planning board.
There are a lot of people who feel the town has extended itself as far as it can, Eveland said.
Wagner also worried that the town’s estimated 8,000 maximum occupancy of guest rooms was overwhelming for the town’s approximate 5,000 residents.
Neighboring Eastport, has 1,500 residents and has been welcoming cruise ships that can host and disembark 2,800 passengers, according to the Bangor Daily News. Orlando’s tourist-to-resident ratio is 1-to-36. When it comes to tourist density, Macau hosts 547,112 tourists per km².
How much, Wagner wondered, is too much.
OTHER DISCUSSION
The group also discussed lodging 1 (three rooms or less) and lodging 7 (historical buildings being used as lodging, which many people often think of as bed and breakfasts) which are the only two uses allowed in the downtown residential district.
Dunphey said that older buildings that were often once large homes that are being converted into lodging (L-7) could be converted into apartment buildings instead.
Board member Kathy St. Germain asked why that lodging use was allowed in the downtown residential district.
There was no expansion of lodging, it was including what was already there, Gurtler explained. Those uses have been there historically in downtown Bar Harbor.
The lodging changes were recently approved by voters in 2024 when the town converted nineteen lodging uses to seven.
Dority said there are other commercial activities that can occur in multiple residential areas in town, not just lodging.
“Housing is not threatened by lodging, but by all commercial uses,” Gagnon said.
“It’s all about what we collectively want as a community,” Martinez said.
Dority advised caution when board members and staff suggested that they speak for all of the community and Gagnon asked how to move forward from the data presented earlier in September.
“Many of the year-round people are benefiting” from the seasonal economy, Gagnon said and she asked how to balance needs.
“What are we trying to accomplish?” she asked the board.
Martinez asked if the discussion was outside the scope of the moratorium.
Gagnon said no because the group had heard about housing and therefore there is a relationship between the two.
“Shouldn’t we wait until we get that last piece?” Dority asked Gagnon. “Are you coming from the point that you assume there is a problem?”
Gagnon said there was discussion capping guest rooms and how much lodging was too much. “For me, it’s clear that we need to agree on the issue we’re trying to solve.”
The final decision, she said, will be the council’s.
Dority said that some of the topics touched on seem more like the sustainable tourism task force’s job. He felt the planning board’s role was to look at the whereas clauses in the moratorium.
Determining if the town had a capacity limit was a goal of the moratorium, Eveland said.
The sustainable tourism task force, she said, is really about the right-size of the community and could have been named the sustainable community task force instead.
POTENTIAL ACTIONS AND NEXT STEPS
Potential action items included possibly changing the town’s definition of guest rooms, making sure that lodging isn’t converted to short-term vacation rentals, a guest room cap on lodging types four and five, parking, subsurface sewer work, and examining lodging types seven and one.
St. Germain said she wasn’t comfortable making a recommendation without the infrastructure piece, which is scheduled for an October workshop.
The council is looking for a recommendation from the planning board about how to proceed with the moratorium, Dority said, but the board has also said that it needs to work on issues because of the research that has already been created.
The next step, Dority said, would be to hear the public works information and then debate the moratorium’s whereas clauses and make a recommendation.
“I believe you have to go through the whereas clauses of the moratorium,” Gagnon said.
To her, the exercise would be three columns. The whereas clause would be one column and then next to that if there is an issue, and what could be done to address that issue. The third column would be a “however” through conversation the board has identified x, y, and z.
“We have our work plan,” Eveland said. There is a list of things the board has been wanting to work toward. Now, the board has information it didn’t have a year ago.
“The question is how do we take the data we have now gotten” and feed it into the to-do lists and see if it changes the board’s priorities, she said.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
- Ordinance Amendment 2025-06: An Amendment to the Town Code to Amend and Extend the Moratorium Ordinance on Certain Transient Accommodations
- Existing Moratorium Ordinance on Certain Transient Accommodations
- To Watch The June 17 Meeting
- June 17 Council Meeting Agenda And Packet
- Data collection overview and roadmap (uploaded 02.18.2025)
- Updated Moratorium Timeline (uploaded 05.01.2025)
- Workshop #2 (March 27, 2025) Meeting recording (uploaded 04.09.2025)
- MDI Historical Society presentation starts at: 04:50
- Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce presentation starts at: 31:17
- Workshop #2: Staff Discussion Guidance Slides (uploaded 03.27.2025)
- Workshop #2: MDI Historical Society Presentation (uploaded 03.28.2025)
- Workshop #2: Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Presentation (Trends in Tourism Economy) (uploaded 03.27.2025)
- Maine Office of Tourism 2023 Economic Impact & Visitor Tracking Report (uploaded 03.28.2025)
- Maine Office of Tourism Downeast & Acadia 2023 Economic Impact & Visitor Tracking Report (uploaded 03.28.2025)
- Workshop #3: Staff Discussion Slides (uploaded 05.01.2025)
- Public Safety: Calls for Service Graph from 2018-2024 (uploaded 05.01.2025)
- Data collection overview and roadmap (uploaded 02.18.2025)
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