Many Moratoriums Later, Bar Harbor Faces Its Next Big Lodging Decision This Month

Carrie Jones

Dec 06, 2025

BAR HARBOR—Unless something changes, it looks as if a majority of the town council will vote to continue a lodging moratorium at its next meeting.

The extension follows two emergency moratoriums and two regular moratoriums, which means that any potential lodging development or major renovation has been frozen since November 19, 2024.

“We need direction,” Town Manager James Smith said so that town staff knows what it needs to help the council proceed with the current moratorium, a tweaked moratorium, or nothing. “There is work in process right now, but that won’t go into effect until next June.”

In October a split planning board recommended not to extend the town’s moratorium. The decision came after the board substantiated one of the moratorium’s eight whereas clauses. The vote not to recommend was 4-3 and came after almost four hours of discussion and deliberation during the afternoon workshop.

The planning board’s analysis of the moratorium’s “whereas clauses” are over. Those clauses outlined reasons and worries for the halt on building. The planning board is working on creating changes for a June election. Those changes are meant to address some concerns the board found when the planning staff presented its data.

That data continued to have aspects of it questioned by local businessman and former planning board chair Tom St.Germain at a planning board workshop last week and at the town council workshop.

He said that the claim that 37 residential uses were converted to commercial units and 17 of those were lodging wasn’t quite right. He had asked for the lots specified and was not given those conversions, which he doesn’t remember happening during his time on the planning board.

St.Germain said the trend was the reverse with lodging uses becoming residential. A West Street property became a bed and breakfast he said, which still had a dwelling unit inside it. No one, he said, had contradicted his data, which he had asked to be scrutinized.

Vice Chair Maya Caines and Councilor Joe Minutolo were not at the workshop.

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COUNCIL CONCERNS

“There’s still the question of the moratorium out there,” Council Chair Val Peacock told the council Thursday evening. “If we don’t do anything, it will end and lift on its own.”

An extension so that there would be no gaps in the moratorium would have to occur at the next town council meeting, which is scheduled for December 16.

Councilor Earl Brechlin said the moratorium has been a valuable process that has identified a bunch of areas which the town could work on though not all the original whereas clauses were found to be fully substantiated. The housing conversion was one of his biggest worries. Those conversions occur from commercial uses including lodging.

The quality of life, neighborhood character and continuity of what goes where is something Brechlin also wanted to look at, including the parking requirements.

“If we drop the moratorium in January, you have a free-fall and you lose any benefit you might have for adopting these” land use changes, he said. “Why did we do any of this if we’re not going to be able to protect our ability to do these changes before June. We need to at least give ourselves that shield if we’re going to get ahead.”

Councilor David Kief worried about the town’s current definition of guest rooms, which has been a steady topic at the planning board workshops. He spoke about room caps, parking, and making sure residential districts don’t have lodging with more than 25 rooms. He also spoke about green space on a lot.

Councilor Steven Boucher said that the information gathered was fantastic and was also worried about the guest room definition.

“I feel a lot of what we have in place based on what we’ve been given is more than adequate,” Boucher said.

Boucher also said he veers away from agreeing about the caps spoken about hotel rooms in different zoning districts.

Brechlin said that parking requirements can also impact how many rooms can go into buildings.

The work to create land use amendments takes a while, Peacock said.

“There’s sort of no end in sight when you think about that kind of work,” she said.

How that folds into a moratorium and a potential June deadline for the planning board’s and planning department’s work might make it feel more of a rush, she said.

“The planning board really just got to the place in trying to identify what the work is,” Peacock said.

And there are concerns in the community, she said, stressing that one or two more projects makes a difference to people in the community. Her concern is that the moratorium is a blanket moratorium on all accommodations. She’s not sure where she’s at with it when it comes to her support for a full extension. She wants the work to be done well and to be done well and right.

“I feel like it’s kind of like the hamster wheel: we keep spinning,” Boucher said. He said he feels the work can get done without a moratorium. “I have the utmost faith that we’re able to take some of these lodging room definitions, we’re able to do the work outside the moratorium to get these things done. I don’t see enough based on the information given in the planning board recommendation that it needs to continue in any capacity.”

Peacock said it would make sense to narrow the moratorium to just limiting the creation of any L1, a lodging type.

“It’s a long time to ban a whole section of use,” Peacock said.

Brechlin also suggested narrowing the moratorium.

“Housing is the biggest thing,” Councilor Randell Sprague said.

“It’s the crisis we’re in. It’s why we’re here,” Kief agreed.

Sprague spoke to employers’ housing needs and how the town might have to speak more to employers in the future about how to work with that and then the conversions of a hotel to employee housing and then potentially going back to a hotel.

“If we don’t do something, this town’s going to keep getting far worse,” Kief said. Housing units outside of town won’t be found either, he said.

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WHAT WOULD A NARROWER MORATORIUM BE ABOUT?

There was some discussion of a moratorium on L1 lodging.

“L1 is defined as a single-family dwelling in which the resident or residents of the dwelling provide short-term overnight lodging in a maximum of three guest rooms located within the dwelling. Meals may be served and shall be limited to overnight guests only,” a document titled “Proposed Solutions to Address Lodging Issues,” created by the planning staff, read.

The rationale is that this would prevent people who do not have a VR-1 to have an L1 instead.

“Because the definition of L1 is similar to the definition of STR, this change would prevent L1 from being used in place of short-term rentals. It would also stop the conversion of dwelling units and/or their accessory buildings into L1, which has occurred when property owners cannot obtain a STR registration because the structure is not a dwelling unit, not their primary residence, there is a cap on VR-2, or when they prefer lodging rules that allow nightly rentals than the minimum of two-night stay for VR-1 and 4-night stay for VR-2,” the document explained.

Brechlin also spoke toward looking at the downtown residential corridor and not allowing commercial uses in some areas of it. He said he knew that it was not going to happen in June.

Planning Board Vice Chair Ruth Eveland said the board is very close on L1 and language around guest rooms. The planning board will workshop those issues again on December 9. Eveland stressed she wasn’t speaking for the planning board but as a member when asked questions by Peacock.

“We’re cranking as fast as we can on things that we are quite sure that we can get done,” she said. “We picked the things that we thought we could get done by June.”

“There’s nothing in our language that describes ‘fit’ in that sense,” Eveland said except for some language in the comprehensive plan.

The board doesn’t make judgements on projects, but determines if projects meet the town’s checklists of needs. There is a public hearing for projects after the project has been deemed complete. Opposition to projects based on “not wanting to have it there” or not liking a project, Eveland said, isn’t a basis that the planning board can deny a project.

Kief said it was a no-brainer to extend the moratorium.

“It is a tight turn-around to craft out something more narrow,” Smith said.

But they could, Smith said, continue the full moratorium with the goal to modify it later on, but before it would end 180 days after enactment.

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PUBLIC COMMENT

Carol Chappell, speaking as a private citizen and not a member of the warrant committee, said the work of the moratorium has just started with data collection all summer long.

“I think it’s important to continue the moratorium on all the Ls (lodging types) until June,” she said.

“Why should the business districts still be burdened with a moratorium?” St.Germain asked, mentioning the portion of Route 3 corridor where hotels such as the Atlantic Oceanside exist.

“With the expense of real estate going up-up-up in this town, younger people might not be able to afford the capital that is required for a 40 or 100 room establishment,” St.Germain said.

“I know that a number of people in the lodging community are feeling it, nobody can expand” other than paint, he said.

There is an escalation of cost, he said, and the people in the lodging industry (from bed and breakfasts to larger hotels) are being told they can’t grow their income for 18 months. The properties he has are in places that are explicitly commercial, he said, also can’t expand. He also added that many of his long-term employees have their own homes, lodging and restaurant workers are also members of the year-round community.

He mentioned Stephen Coston, a hotelier who provides housing for all his employees who need it free to the employee.

“That’s affordable housing when it doesn’t cost the employee anything,” St.Germain said, stressing that the moratorium was in response to a potential project of Coston’s that would have abutted the Conners Emerson School and would have had a hotel as well as housing. “He was very willing to negotiate things. There was no negotiation. There was a panicked rush.”

“You are able to craft a middle ground in this moratorium where certain districts can be excluded,” St.Germain said, such as the downtown residential district.

Sprague said he was more afraid of homes being turned into employee housing rather than year-round housing.

Charles Sidman agreed with certain points St.Germain made. “Tom is right if statistics and data are cited it should be in plain view.”

Sidman also agreed the moratorium began as a reaction to community angst.

“The moratorium to have any validity and usefulness, I think it should continue until two things happen,” he said.

The plan is created and then proposals are put before the voters.

“As ill-planned it was and as emotionally motivated it was, we have this moratorium, let’s not now break it down, waste it. Let’s keep it until it produces the intended consequences of a better plan,” Sidman said.

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PLANNING BOARD WORK

How to deal with future lodging in the town was also workshopped at the Bar Harbor Planning Board in separate meetings this week.

While the council spoke about extending the moratorium, the planning board investigated potential changes to the town’s rules regulating lodging that was presented by planning staff, December 3.

One of the changes would be to create guest capacity requirements for each lodging use and change other lodging definitions.

“The idea behind the way it’s written is that you can manage scale,” Planning Director Michele Gagnon told the Bar Harbor Planning Board members at their meeting.

There could be more options created in future land use amendments. It would create a minimum of three rooms for all lodging uses.

“We’re trying to manage the scale,” Gagnon said so that people can understand what might go in next door. Later on she said, “I think this is a really good start.”

There were multiple comments about scale during the meeting. Code Enforcement Officer Michael Gurtler asked what scale meant to the members. There are measures of scale in the ordinance such as lot coverage, lot size, height maximums, and setbacks.

Planning Board member Guy Dunphey said scale is based on expectation. When he reads that there is a 25-room building, he thinks of the Pathmaker or Inn on Mount Desert, not a sprawling structure.

Gurtler said they have guest capacity proposed to be added, which would also add scale measures which are not subjective.

Other potential changes include no longer allowing L1 as a use, which was also spoken about during the council workshop.

Other changes include deleting lodging uses that are not considered compatible with the district character or the environment.

This proposal would remove multiple lodging uses that are currently allowed from multiple zones. The intent is to prevent commercial encroachment and also safeguard wells and septic system, the document said.

Any changes, which are still in draft form, that continue on would have to be finalized, and go to public hearing and eventually be voted on in June by voters.

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A QUICK NOTE: We’ve posted a lot of photos from the last two days of holiday events over on our Facebook page, which is here.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Rudman-Winchell’s explainer on moratoriums.

To watch the workshop.

As Bar Harbor Weighs Its Lodging Future, One Former Planning Board Chair Says the Town Might Have Some Numbers Wrong

Carrie Jones

Read full story

To read the moratorium.

• 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)
• Workshop #4 slides

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