Jan 05, 2026
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Maine Seacoast Mission.
BAR HARBOR—In a four-page December 29 letter to the Bar Harbor Town Council, an attorney for Holiday Associates of Naples alleges that the town is “unlawfully using the moratorium process as a pretext to stop Holiday Associates’ renovation project of the Park Entrance Motel property.”
The letter came on the afternoon that the town council voted 5-2 to extend a moratorium on lodging, which has been paused since November 2024.
“We’ve been at this property since 2001, since we bought it,” property representative Eben Salvatore told the town’s planning board in July.
The proposal is to redevelop the Park Entrance Motel site, decreasing the overall size and rebuilding its pier. The plans would make it into a four-story hotel on the eight acres. The original motel was built in 1967 and has 58 guest rooms.
While the planning board agreed that the property would decrease nonconformities on the site, the plan could not proceed because of the moratorium.
Planning Board Chair Millard Dority had said there was no problem with the specific project. “It’s a vast improvement.”
However, he did feel like it fell under the moratorium’s restrictions.
At the time, town attorney Stephen Wagner advised that there is a general prohibition on the pause on building and major renovations of lodging. That applies notwithstanding the specific language citing the code enforcement officer, he suggested.
The project’s 153-page development application was filed in June. It would demolish the current motel buildings. The new hotel would be 25 suites in mostly the same position on the property as the current motel. The marina would include offices and a shower, laundry, and shops. There would also be a restaurant in the hotel. The marina would have a bar.
Holiday Associates of Naples is owned by the Walsh brothers as is Ocean Properties (OP). OP has refurbished multiple hotels in New England and runs the Harborside Hotel, Bar Harbor Regency, West Street Hotel, Bar Harbor Club, Samoset, and Wentworth by the Sea. The company’s subsidiaries are involved in lawsuits regarding the disembarkation of cruise ships in Bar Harbor.
In the December 29 letter, Jonathan A. Pottle (Katahdin Law LLC) objects to the moratorium’s extension, which pauses any building and/or substantial renovation of any lodging in Bar Harbor. He frames his objections as four points.
The first is that Pottle believes the moratorium in its extended and amended version does not meet Maine statutory requirements.
“The moratoria statute which authorizes and governs municipal moratoria, provides that a moratorium is only justified (a) to prevent a shortage or overburden of public facilities as a result of any proposed or anticipated development; or (b) because existing comprehensive plans, land use ordinance or regulations or other applicable laws are inadequate to prevent serious public harm from residential, commercial or industrial development in the affected geographic area,” Pottle writes.
Those criteria do not exist, he asserts.
”This is plainly evidenced by findings the Bar Harbor Planning Board made itself, where at its October 14 meeting the planning board voted its recommendation not to extend the moratorium because (a) there is no risk that public facilities may be overburdened, or (b) that the existing ordinances and applicable laws are not inadequate to prevent serious public harm from any proposed or anticipated developments. As you know the planning board made these findings after numerous public meetings that took place over many months and included most of the department heads of the town,” he writes.
“Tellingly, after the planning board issued its findings, the proposed extension and amendment was updated to remove any overburdening and serious public harm preamble clauses,” he continues. “As the municipal reviewing authority tasked with reviewing the adequacy of the Town’s ordinances and regulations under moratorium criteria, the town council should heed the planning board’s recommendation.”
Town Manager James Smith said in a December 30 email, “The town was advised by the town attorney that the council has the legal authority to extend a moratorium, if it makes the findings required by state law and those findings are supported by the record.”
REASON #2
Pottle also says that the process the town underwent for the extension was flawed because he believes the town’s charter and statutes require planning board review.
“As the municipal board tasked with addressing land use ordinance issues, it is common sense and prudent for the town council to have the planning board’s input,” he writes.
“Specifically, Town Charter in Article III, Section C-10 and Section C-14 provide(s) that the council may only adopt a land use ordinance by supermajority vote after (i) it is first recommended to the planning board by the planning director, and (ii) upon review and after a public hearing, the planning board recommends it to the town council by a supermajority vote. None of this has occurred and these steps are not optional,” he continues.
He argues that in the statutory definition a “moratorium” means a “land use ordinance.”
This is especially true, he writes, because the language is quite different from the original moratorium.
“It also bears emphasis to lawfully extend any moratorium under the moratoria statute, there must be specific findings that ‘(A) [t]he problem giving rise to the need for the moratorium still exist, and (B) reasonable progress is being made to alleviate the giving rise to the need for the moratorium.’ 30-A M.R.S. § 4356(2)(A)-(B); see also, § 4356(3). Here, however, the proposed extended and amended moratorium cannot meet these requirements because, as has been noted above, the Planning Board previously found there was no ‘necessity’ justifying an extension of the original moratorium. In other words, there was no ‘problem’ giving justifying the original moratorium. Therefore, there can be no justification for extending it,” he writes.
“The town attorney reviewed the draft findings set out in the moratorium and advised the town that those findings, if reached by the council, would satisfy the applicable statutory requirements,” Smith said. “The town council made those findings, voted in the affirmative, and adopted the moratorium. The town attorney also reviewed the assertion that a supermajority vote was required and advised the town that they disagreed with that conclusion.”
REASON #3
Pottle also speaks specifically to the Park Entrance Motel property, which is on an 8-acre parcel in a business zoning district (Hulls Cove Business), he specifies and not a residential one. Part of the parcel is in the town’s Shoreland General zone.
“The Park Entrance Motel does not and cannot present a risk of ‘encroachment of commercial operations’ into a longstanding residential area,” he argues. “Moreover, because it has always been a commercial property, it cannot present ‘conversion of use’ issues that would give rise to housing concerns.”
“Stated simply, the justifications identified in both the original moratorium and proposed extended and amended version are not at all implicated by the redevelopment of the Park Entrance Motel property. While we understand the need for additional housing in Bar Harbor, the Park Entrance Motel Property (and frankly many other commercial properties) simply do not present threats to any housing availability in Bar Harbor. This points up yet another deficiency in the extended and amended moratorium. The moratoria statute requires a moratorium to identify the ‘affected geographic area’ to which it applies. 30-A M.R.S. § 4356(1)(B). Yet neither the original nor the proposed extended and amended moratorium does so. Plainly, the Town of Bar Harbor as a whole is not exclusively ‘residential’ and, as a whole, is not experiencing on a widespread basis the limited (and insufficient) conditions stated in the original moratorium and the current extended and amended moratorium version,” he writes.
REASON #4
Pottle’s final reason for opposition also relates specifically to the Park Entrance Motel project.
“The town appears to be unlawfully using the moratorium process as a pretext to stop Holiday Associates’ renovation project of the Park Entrance Motel property,” he writes. “In compliance with the town’s permitting process, Holiday Associates, in good faith, met with town staff, reviewed the proposed renovation project with them, and submitted detailed plans and studies for review by town staff and the planning board. The site plan submitted is clearly designed to meet the existing language of the LUO, which has been approved by the voters numerous times.”
“After these meetings and the submission of the renovation project plans, the town staff developed and proposed specific draft LUO amendment language to prohibit Holiday Associates’ renovation project. Although omitting specific reference to the Park Entrance Motel, this new language effectively singles out and targets the Park Entrance Motel renovation project.
“This is troubling and runs counter to the most basic principles of equal treatment and fair play. Moreover, if the town’s mandatory consultative process can be turned on any developer, as it is here, it would threaten to chill the essential dialogue between tax paying property owners and town government,” he writes.
Pottle asks that the town “cease targeting the Park Entrance Motel project” and formally requests “that the town preserve all records pertaining to the Park Entrance Motel and the Park Entrance Motel Project, including but not limited to all communications of any type, including all electronic communications, in the event that litigation of any of the matters referred to in this letter or which may later arise becomes necessary.”
He asks that the town preserve any documents pertaining to the project it might normally destroy.
“In short, Holiday Associates is entitled to fair and equal treatment under the law and The town should take steps to ensure that the town staff and the town, itself, does not use moratorium processes as a disguise to attempt to frustrate the Park Entrance Motel project,” he writes.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Park Entrance Motel
- Application (amended 6.24.2025)
- Completeness Review Public Notice (posted 6.23.2025)
To watch past town council and planning board meetings, click here.
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