Split Bar Harbor Planning Board Recommends Cap

Jun 18, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Viridian Law.

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BAR HARBOR—In a split vote, the Bar Harbor Planning Board has proposed a 12-unit cap to any future lodging built in downtown Bar Harbor.

In a series of daytime workshops this spring, the board has been tweaking, creating, and discussing a graduated lodging scale meant to be presented to town voters in November.

If this cap moves forward, it would be one of those changes and would primarily impact the area of Main Street and Cottage Street in Bar Harbor.

The changes would create new rules and definitions about lodgings throughout the town as well.

The work comes as a lodging moratorium, which has been occurring since November 2024, expires in July. The Town Council will determine to extend that moratorium or not.

The town’s Planning Board has been working on local land use ordinance (LUO) changes to be presented to voters—or not—that deal with the town’s lodging rules all while emergency and regular moratoriums have stopped all lodging construction and extensive remodels in the town.

Emergency moratoriums can be adopted at the same meeting as they are proposed. They stay in place for 60 days. Non-emergency moratoriums can be in place for 180 days.

Throughout the spring, the Planning Board discussed the proposed potential cap for Downtown Village I and Downtown Village II as 30 guest units.

The further reduction to a 12-room cap came during the June 10 meeting as a result of a motion of Planning Board member John Seavitt.

Planning Director Michele Gagnon said a 30-room cap in those zones (rather than 12) was optimal. She spoke of recent, future, and ongoing plans throughout the town and the park meant to decrease congestion.

“I think there’s a lot to the story, and I know that we’re talking about today, however, we have to think about the whole picture and not just about how we feel, but about what is good for the whole community. And that’s the balancing act between a lot of these things,” Gagnon said.

She also encouraged the board members to not go down to a 12-guest unit cap rather than a 30.

Gagnon encouraged people to look at the districts themselves and suggested potentially keeping L-30 in at least one section of downtown proper.

Planning Board Chair Ruth Eveland said if the town hopes to consolidate zones in the future, that would create more inconsistency.

Seavitt’s amendment passed 4-2. Seavitt, Guy Dunphey, Kathleen St. Germain, and Teresa Wagner voted in favor. Eveland and J. Clark Stivers voted against.

There will be a public hearing, July 1.

Since that vote, the Quietside Journal has reported that St. Germain hopes for a revote because she had mistakenly voted yes. If she had voted against the 12-unit cap, the vote would have been tied, 3-3.

Seavitt explained during the meeting his reasoning.

“It is a change,” Seavitt said and he advocated for his view partially because of limited public engagement in the process.

However, he reasoned, the Comprehensive Plan, approved by voters last year, did have public engagement.

He said the 30-room cap “doesn’t really address those concerns in recorded public comments” in the plan.

“The comprehensive plan envisions that Downtown Village I and II include space for the growth of small businesses that service the residents of Bar Harbor. And I think that the opportunity to redevelop to the extent that L-30 would allow would not preserve the opportunity for such uses,” Seavitt continued. “We have seen recent developments in town, such as the library and the addition to the library that do serve this goal of making the town available for the people that live here, and it’s in this spirit that I advance this motion.”

Eveland asked about the additional non-conformities that the proposal would create before asking the board for other comments.

Wagner said the non-conformities were real and impactful, but they’d been working on language that would help mitigate harm to existing businesses.

“For me, this is exactly the kind of discussion which would have been better if we could have had a large community discussion around it, of the sort that I had envisioned and proposed in our last meeting, which, apparently, is not likely to happen immediately,” Eveland said. “I’m personally uncomfortable. I think that’s a restriction—that while there are many people in town who would find that delightful and wonderful.”

However, Eveland worried that others would definitely find it a sticking point and be unable to move forward with the rest of the graduated lodging scale.

“I would hate to see the rest of this sunk on the basis of that,” Eveland said of the entire proposal.

She preferred to keep the cap for lodging in that area at 30, which was the number in the draft that the board has been working with and included in the Planning Board’s packets.

Dunphey asked if it was possible to be more flexible. He referenced the Ivy Manor on Main Street, which he said was “not a big place” and with the change would be nonconforming.

He thinks of downtown as Main Street, Cottage Street, and Mount Desert Street. Larger hotels are a bit farther away from that center, on West Street or outer Cottage Street.

During discussion, St. Germain said she was unwilling to go with the 30 cap.

“It’s not new stuff,” she said and she didn’t want to increase the nonconformity. “Thirty is a good number to start with.”

Stivers agreed though he said the concept was interesting.

Both hotelier Tom St.Germain and Cara Ryan spoke in public comments.

For anything to move forward to the November ballot, the Bar Harbor Planning Board had to schedule a public hearing in July, which it did. Town Council review would then be later in that month and if it is moved forward by the Town Council it would be voted to do so in August.

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LINK TO LEARN MORE

A recording of the meeting was uploaded to Town Hall Streams, June 16. You can view it below.

Meeting Agenda

Town Hall Streams Video

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