Why Bar Harbor Is Still Pausing Lodging Development—and What Comes Next
Dec 17, 2025
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Psychiatry.
BAR HARBOR—The Bar Harbor Town Council unanimously moved to schedule a public hearing on the potential extension of the town’s moratorium on building or renovating any lodging.
The public hearing is scheduled for December 29, which Council Chair Val Peacock noted was a difficult date for many to attend.
She suggested people who can not attend, but want their voices heard, write emails since it’s a busy time of the year.
“It’s a little bit of a tough time and I know that a lot of people have a lot to say,” Peacock said via Zoom.
If the town council enacts it again, the new iteration of the moratorium would continue for 180 days unless the town council extends, repeals, or modifies it. That extension would begin again in January.
Opponents of the extension say that it’s unduly punishing one commercial use in town and look to a planning board vote to not extend the moratorium since most of the moratorium’s reasoning (the whereas clauses) were unsubstantiated. They have also said that it takes staff and board time away from focusing on creating or encouraging more housing.
Proponents of an extension say that it gives the town planning staff and planning board more time to enact land use ordinance changes that could limit some lodging in some areas. They also say that changes could limit conversions of homes to lodgings.
Potential changes currently include replacing the term “guest room” with “guest unit” and establishing a minimum number of guest units and a maximum guest capacity, using state fire marshal’s formula for calculations.
Another change would remove L1 type of lodging from all districts. This type of lodging has been single family dwellings.
The town would also remove any “unused or inappropriate” lodging types from some districts, update parking requirements to reflect guest capacity, and remove the lodging expansion exception in the nonconformity section.
That exception allows lodging that have already existed in an area where they are not currently allowed to be built to be able to renovate in ways that the town considers expansion.
On February 5, the town council voted to enact a 180-day moratorium on most lodgings. It was renewed in July.
The town’s planning board and staff worked to collect data relevant to the “whereas” clauses in that moratorium.
Back in September 2023, the town’s attorney Stephen W. Wagner (of Rudman Winchell) explained that a moratorium is “essentially a pause on development.”
To have that pause, the councilors have to make certain findings: that the moratorium is necessary to stop a burden on public facilities and other aspects; that the previously existing comprehensive plan is inadequate to do so. In June, the town voted to update its comprehensive plan. The whereas clauses serve as those findings.
At the December 16 meeting, Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Everal Eaton said that the chamber opposed any further extension of the moratorium on transient accommodations, which is another term used for lodgings such as hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts.
“While I recognize the initial intent was to allow for data collection, the town has reached a point of diminishing returns where the costs of the ‘pause’ outweigh the benefits,” Eaton said.
He urged the council to follow the October 14 recommendation of the planning board, which voted 4-3 against an extension.
“As the board concluded, the town now possesses sufficient data to address concerns through targeted ordinance changes rather than a blunt, town-wide ban,” Eaton said.
He said that continuing the moratorium would stifle responsible reinvestment and prevent local property owners from upgrading aging structures. This, he said, often results in lower density and better environmental standards.
He added that the moratorium distorts the focus on housing solutions.
“As noted by several planning board members, lodging is not the sole driver of our housing crisis. Penalizing one industry does not automatically create affordable housing; it simply creates economic stagnation,” his statement read. “It is time to move from ‘pausing’ to ‘planning.’ I hope we can work on the specific land-use ordinance changes for the June 2026 town meeting without further hampering our local economy.”
Ocean Properties’ Director of Local Operations Eben Salvatore spoke on behalf of the Park Entrance Hotel property, and said that he saw a couple of issues with the language.
“I’ve been to the workshops. I’ve sat here at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve watched the planning board and the staff wait for data and then try to make sense of the data and then try to come up with the language,” Salvatore said. “I think it’s the pressure of these deadlines. I’ve been through a lot of zoning processes. Michele (Gagnon, planning director) does a great job of it. This one isn’t one of them. The language today was new today. The language last week has now been replaced.”
He said at a planning board workshop last week he brought up an idea on how the Park Entrance Hotel’s renovation might survive the proposed ordinance changes, and then at the Dec. 16 workshop there was new language, which would ensure the hotel could not be renovated.
“There were documents today that aren’t on the website, that weren’t part of the packet, but seemed to be part of the discussion,” Salvatore said. “There’s really no clarity now exactly about what’s going to happen and what’s coming.”
Language, he said has changed from square feet per room and now it’s square feet per building.
Some ideas, he said, might flesh out to be good ones, but he felt that there is a push to get it done while there is a moratorium.
“I’ve made good faith efforts to bring our project to the planning board, to you guys, and it seems like every time I divulge what we might do the language changes so that we can’t do it anymore and that’s troublesome,” he said. “We’ve got a 58-room hotel that’s been falling apart and we’ve been trying for almost two years now to fix it.”
Carol Chappell, who said she was speaking as a private citizen and not as a warrant committee member, said she’s closely followed the planning department’s work and throughout the last month there has been an incredible amount of work in the public and that all could read the proposals.
She said there has been no lack of transparency.
“It’s very clear what is happening,” she said.
She hopes the moratorium is extended because she believes the work is not done.
Teresa Wagner, a planning board member, said that the board has done a methodical and thorough job. She appreciated Chappell’s comments.
“There has been absolutely nothing that’s been done to any particular project,” she said, adding that she’s proud of the work the planning board has done and grateful for the work of the town’s planning staff.
Then, speaking as a member of the public, she said, “I urge you to consider voting in favor of extending the moratorium.”
When the planning board on October 14 recommended the council do not extend the moratorium, Wagner was one of the dissenting votes.
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. Since then, the planning board has been meeting in multiple workshops that have lasted multiple hours trying to hone down potential land use ordinance changes to deal with both housing and lodging issues.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Contact all town council members and the town manager simultaneously by using Bar Harbor Town Council email.
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