Town Moves Forward on Potential Lodging Changes Ahead of Potential 2026 Vote
Nov 24, 2025
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BAR HARBOR—The town has moved forward with potential changes to its land use ordinance to address some residents’ concerns about where lodging can go and its potential impact on the town.
The discussion comes while the town is still in the midst of a lodging moratorium renewed July 31, 2025, which is set to end 180 days from that date.
On October 14, a split planning board did not recommend that the Bar Harbor Town Council extend the lodging moratorium.
If the town council enacts it again, a new iteration of the moratorium would continue, again for 180 days unless the town council extends, repeals, or modifies it. If renewed, it would start in January 2026.
PATH FORWARD
In a duo of meetings last week, the Bar Harbor Town Council and then the Bar Harbor Planning Board moved forward with the town’s potential amendments to its land use ordinance.
Those amendments, a result of work from the still ongoing pause in hotel development and major renovations, could result in changes to where some lodging types are allowed in the town and new definitions for lodging-related terms. They do not involve changes to short-term rentals, which were recently tweaked by the town council and where some forms are capped in the town.
The first step in that movement forward was the council accepting a Lodging-Related Land Use Ordinance Policy Solutions document last Tuesday.
That acceptance of the five highlighted solutions also referred the five concepts to Planning Director Michele Gagnon to develop and then draft amendments to the town’s rules on land use. The planning board will advise and review. The final say will be with the voters, likely in the June 2026 election.
The suggestions come from the planning board’s lodging recommendations which came from its lodging moratorium work, town staff, and the council workshop. Now it will be back in the board’s hands.
“Significant work is needed to assess the impacts and feasibility of these proposed policy solutions, but we hope they can be finalized in time for the June 2026 ballot,” the document reads. “Success depends on the details, which will become clearer as we move forward.”
THE FIVE AREAS AND TAKING ON THE WORK
The five areas are managing lodging scale for certain categories, clarifying and proposing new lodging definitions, limiting residential conversions to lodging uses, ensuring compatibility with district character and environment, and standardizing parking requirements.
It’s a lot of words with a lot of abstract terms, but the planning board began this week trying to parse it out and work through it.
Planning Board Chair Millard Dority first wanted to make sure that these potential changes were what the planning board wanted to tackle now.
“Is it the most important thing we should be working on,” Dority asked. “Is lodging in crisis?”
“In my opinion, lodging itself is not a crisis,” said planning board member Guy Dunphey.
Dunphey said it’s all part of the bigger situation creating a crisis, influenced, he believes, by factors such as short-term rentals, which the town has a cap on as well as inspections, licensing requirements, and a yearly fee.
“This is all part of a big equation,” Dunphey said.
He wants Bar Harbor to be a year-round community with a thriving downtown.
He was also worried about the size of hotels going into the town. Dority said that there are lots of standards and height standards that limit hotels’ size.
“We have talked repeatedly that our biggest priority is dealing with housing,” Vice Chair Ruth Eveland said.
These are specific points that have come up after the moratorium talk, she said. If the board could spend another couple months getting it ready for the voters rather than having it sit and wait, it could be a good thing, she said.
“Then we have cleared this off the plate and it doesn’t have to come back to us in the same way and then we can move on,” Eveland said.
It may not be the highest priority, she said, but she’d like to just deal with it and not go through repeated cycles of having it come back to be worked on again.
“I respect that, too, and if the planning board agrees with that, I’m happy to proceed,” Dority said, “but I just think it should just come from the planning board and not necessarily from the planning department or the council about what we deal with. I will say what you said about getting this off in a couple months. Every time something like this comes up, we bump housing. Every time. Something else comes up, we don’t talk about housing.” He then repeated, “We don’t talk about housing.”
Dority agreed with Dunphey that if people want a year-round community, the town has to have year-round housing for all economic brackets and not just for the wealthy.
Planning board member Teresa Wagner said they’ve been focusing on these topics because of the board’s work during the moratorium.
She agreed that significant lodging growth is not the only culprit that impacts housing and is one of many factors that do so. Member John Seavitt agreed with others that there was momentum on the issues and that there is a relationship with housing.
POTENTIAL CHANGE: MANAGING LODGING SCALE
All the changes are currently in draft form and will likely be tweaked, revised, or they could also potentially not be moved forward.
This potential change would be managing the scale for certain categories of lodging(L2, L3, L6, L7).
That would set the minimum number of guest rooms per lodging type. It would also, “set a total guest capacity per lodging type to ensure appropriate scale and compatibility with surrounding land uses and available infrastructure,” according to town documents.
Lodging 2 and 3 have a maximum of 12 guest rooms.
Lodging 6 and 7 have a maximum of 25 guest rooms.
This would not address L4 and L5. Those have no guest room cap.
“Developing more lodging graduated size options would require more time and could be part of the next phase,” the documents state.
“I’m sure we’ll get tons of feedback on that and that’s great,” Gagnon said.
Wagner was worried that it might not be written in a way residents understand and she also wanted changes about how many people are allowed in the lodging types as well as the sizes of the buildings allowed.
The board also discussed how to determine what a guest room is, whether or not it should be now defined by the town in a way that doesn’t comply with industry standards. For example, if a living room in a suite has a pull out couch, does that count as a guest room?
A cap on occupants could alleviate that concern, staff suggested.
During public discussion, former planning board chair and business owner Tom St.Germain suggested having a suite be two bedrooms behind a door.
“If the traveling public wants multiple bedrooms, they aren’t going to stay in a hotel,” he said. They stay at a campground or a vacation rental.
Eveland said that the management of lodging scale and limiting the amount of space for lodging vs limiting the amount of people using that space are two connected but different issues. She’d prefer to focus on one or the other.
For Dority it seemed like the issue was more about where the lodging goes rather than the size of the lodging. Eveland said possibly consolidating the larger hotels in one space in town was preferable rather than having more smaller establishments sprinkled throughout the town.
POTENTIAL CHANGE: CLARIFY AND PROPOSE NEW LODGING DEFINITIONS
This would change the definition of transient lodging accommodation and of guest room. It would add three new definitions: single transient lodging establishment, suite, total guest capacity.
POTENTIAL CHANGE: LIMIT RESIDENTIAL CONVERSIONS AND REMOVE LODGING 1 USE.
This potential amendment would halt the Lodging 1 category (L1). L1 is less than three guest rooms. If this is no longer allowed in the future, the current lodgings would continue to exist until ownership changed.
“We have seen a lot of people go to that (L1) because they could not get a VR-2,” Gagnon said.
VR-2 is a short-term rental capped in town and not an owner’s primary residence.
VR-1s have two-night minimums but L1s are nightly. So, if a hotel called because they were full and a person needed a place to stay due to an emergency or other reason, the L1 could take them, which is a current practice.
There is no licensing for lodging in general. They do not have a yearly licensing fee the way short-term rentals do.
“It’s definitely something that may happen in the future,” Gagnon said.
If someone sold their home that was a L1, then it would not be able to continue as a L1. There are three that have closed and six currently operating, Staff Planner Haley Bondy said.
If a space has no place to cook, it can’t be considered a dwelling unit and therefore be a vacation rental. Those can be L1s.
POTENTIAL CHANGE: ENSURE COMPATIBILITY WITH DISTRICT CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT
As currently discussed this would take away the use of lodging types that aren’t currently used in certain areas in town out of the areas, not allowing them to be built there again.
Town Hill Business would lose four potential lodging uses. That district relies on wells and septic systems. Similarly, Shoreland General Development IV (It says V in the notes.) has no town sewer or water, which is part of the reasoning for the proposed changes.
According to town documents, “This would protect neighborhoods and safeguard environmentally sensitive or low-density areas served by wells and septic systems. This would not consist in a comprehensive town-wide analysis of all lodging types and districts to identify appropriate location for new lodging. Doing such an analysis would require more time and could be part of the next phase.”
POTENTIAL CHANGE: STANDARDIZE PARKING REQUIREMENTS
This would change parking requirements, linking them to total lodging capacity instead of the number of guest rooms. The intent would be to make sure there is “a more accurate reflection of parking demand.”
This is also currently for L3 though it was not in the above table. That will be updated.
The change would allow parking for L2 and L3 from one spot for guest room to one space for every 4 guests based on total guest capacity, plus one. It would do the same change for L4, L5, L6 and L7, but without that added extra space.
“Between 12-15 lots were purchased just for parking,” Dority said, referencing an earlier report by Housing and Community Planner Cali Martinez and Bondy.
Parking is a commodity, he said. How it’s managed relates to other issues.
Wagner said it wasn’t a change she would push at this time.
Gagnon said that more people are coming without cars, particularly visitors from other countries and younger generations.
St.Germain said that king beds tend to have two people in it, who typically arrive in one car. The proposal might be more complicated than it needs to be, he said.
They will take a “second stab” at it all, Gagnon said and come back with a revision. At least one more workshop will be scheduled for December.
SURVEY
Bar Harbor is developing a Sustainable Tourism Management Plan, and your voice matters. We’re asking residents to take a few minutes to complete a brief survey that will help shape the future of tourism in our community.
Take the survey online here:
Prefer paper? Printed copies are available.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Planning Board Workshop Agenda
Watch the Planning Board Workshop
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