Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are working to turn a Town Hill property into workforce housing, potentially creating as many as 50 homes on the town’s portion.
Aug 20, 2026
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BAR HARBOR—Just how many homes could go into the town’s portion of a 55-acre site in Town Hill?
That’s the question Bar Harbor Town Councilor Randell Sprague asked Bar Harbor’s Community and Housing Planner Cali Martinez, August 18.
It’s a question centered around a drive toward more available housing that’s been occurring in Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, and at the state legislative levels as well as with multiple Mount Desert Island nonprofits for years.
“We can get up to potentially 50 with current zoning,” Martinez told Sprague and the rest of the Town Council.
That would mean up to 50 more year-round homes for people to live on Mount Desert Island where housing availability is caught up by normal pressures in Maine—high building costs, high demands, housing stock being used for second residences, short-term rentals, environmental constraints, not-in-my-backyard mentalities—but also with limited buildable lots due to a large portion of the island hosting Acadia National Park and a need to give seasonal workers temporary homes while they are here.
The 55-acre site in Town Hill that is a joint venture by the town and Acadia National Park meant to house affordable workforce homes could potentially have up to 50 total units at the town’s portion of its maximum build-out, but it’s too soon to know for sure.
A final plan would have to go before the Town Council before its enacted.
The town put out a survey of residents about what they’d like to see for housing on the parcel.
“The town and park also met with the MDI town managers to gauge again what does success look like, especially when meeting the federal legislation on how to define affordable workforce housing to benefit the other towns. And overall, the town managers generally supported a broad approach that could serve a range of household types. So that means families, single couples, variety of incomes and ages to meet a variety of workforce and industry needs,” Martinez said.
John D. Rockefeller gifted the parcel to Acadia National Park in 1960.
In 1986 the national park boundary was established by federal legislation. There were parcels outside the boundary that were supposed to be deleted. This 55-acre parcel is outside the boundary.
“Flash ahead to 40 years that never happened for a number of reasons,” Acadia National Park’s Administration Assistant John Kelly said in 2025 and in that time housing has become a priority for the island. Previously, the parcel had been designated to be a transfer station for all island towns.
“It finally came to fruition in 2022,” Kelly had said when the use went from a transfer station to workforce housing and the park would retain up to 15 acres for its own housing development.
In 2023, the town and park began to discuss the project and decided to co-lead.
At the time there was no boundary survey of the parcel or understanding of how much of the land was suitable for housing. The next year, the town hired a consulting team to determine if there were a lot of wetlands or vernal pools that could impact the ability to develop housing. At that same time, there was a cost share agreement between the town and park based on the acreage that each had. Friends of Acadia paid for the park’s portion of the land use analysis while the town applied for and was awarded a grant to pay for it.
“One of the biggest challenges to this property was” the access to the Crooked Road, Kelly said.
Fast forward to 2026 and the project continues to be developed.
“We have taken a a due diligence approach, which is the current phase that we’re in now and gearing to finish up called phase one, the existing conditions analysis, which aimed to address three key questions. Is this parcel developable? And if so, how much? To determine the access and to determine an equitable divide of the parcel into the 40 and the 15 acres. And the town has hired consultants to complete this work to answer those big questions and Friends of Acadia on behalf of the park in addition to a state grant helped pay for this work,” Martinez said.
Consultants have mapped the natural resources on the site, noted the vernal pools and wetlands. They’ve also completed a soil suitability analysis.
This, Martinez said, helped analyze the soils on the site to determine which soils and areas are suitable for septic systems and overall development.
“The consultants also completed an initial zoning analysis for the town’s 40 acres to get a sense which areas are best, are most suitable for housing and how much,” she said.
The town has also recorded its right-of-way to with the Hancock County Registry of Deeds. That right-of-way crosses two parcels that have access on the Crooked Road.
“Island Housing Trust was key to helping with that process to minimize the impacts on potential property owners to do so,” Martinez said. “And the majority of the recorded right-of-way is over the Island Housing Trust property. So, we are very grateful for their collaboration on that.
The park’s 15 acres is on the back end of the overall parcel with the town’s section toward the front.
“The primary reason behind that is the park does not intend to develop their portion anytime soon and this would allow the town to move faster than the park would be able to,” Martinez said.
The park has not yet released a specific timeline for the development.
Friends of Acadia, a nonprofit group dedicated to supporting the park, has helped with seasonal housing for park employees with multiple projects since 2020 including the Dane Farm project in Seal Harbor, Harden Farm expansion in Bar Harbor, purchase of the Kingsleigh Inn in Southwest Harbor, and purchase of six existing townhomes on the Jordan River Road in Trenton. Most of FOA’s efforts are collaborative.
The League of Towns—a consortium of town administrators in the area—have also been looking for ways towns can work together to help with both housing and congestion. Last week the Southwest Harbor Library hosted Yes in My Back Yard (YIMBY) a panel that included Martinez as well as Noel Musson of the Musson Group who has been working on multiple towns’ land use ordinances as well as with the League. Sherry Billings, director of Island Housing Trust, which has been working on housing solutions, was also at the panel. Mount Desert 365 has been leading housing solutions and creating homes in Mount Desert.
For the Town Hill project, Martinez said that they’ll be finishing the existing conditions analysis by the end of 2026 and then phase two would involve the conceptual neighborhood design.
“The first step to enter into that would be to have um to establish the programmatic elements of this neighborhood, which Council would establish. And staff anticipates doing this through a series of workshops in the context of the overall housing targets and industry feedback. And this could include key programmatic areas such as but not limit to the types of housing, income limits, bedrooms, the rental versus owner occupied units in addition to other sustainability goals such as construction standards or sites and amenities,” Martinez said.
Once those programmatic elements, staff will use those elements to develop an RFP or RFQ for phase two to find developers.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
To read the 2025 council packet with the Martinez Report (at the end)
To read the council packet for this meeting.
Where Will People Find Homes?
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