After nearly two years of restrictions, planners might be examining questions of development intensity, housing, downtown’s structure with potential help from consultants.

Carrie Jones

Sep 05, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Coastal Kayaking Tours and Acadia Bike.

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BAR HARBOR—The number one goal, Bar Harbor Planning Director Michele Gagnon told the Planning Board members, September 3, was to get out from under the town’s lodging moratorium.

That pause on development has been in place—in one form or another—since November 19, 2024. The Bar Harbor Town Council just extended it again this summer. It will be in place for 180 days unless the council repeals it.

The moratorium continues to halt Lodging IV and Lodging V builds or renovations in the Downtown Village I and Downtown Village II districts; Ireson Hill Corridor and Salisbury Cove Village districts; and Bar Harbor Gateway, Shoreland General Development I, and Shoreland General Development III districts.

Lodging IV is lodging for overnight guests that might include accessory facilities and services. Lodging V is the same, but also includes services for the general public and conference centers.

According to the moratorium’s updated language, it is meant to give the town time to complete “ordinance amendments addressing regulatory deficiencies” in its lodging uses and so that it can protect “the public health, safety and welfare and preventing development approvals that would substantially impair implementation of those amendments.”

The second goal, Gagnon told Planning Board members, is “having conversations with the council to set policy direction to decide on some short-term actions they can take … and some longer term actions that they can take, and also—as part of this—(is) talking about lodging.”

Gagnon said tensions have been established during the moratorium discussions.

“(There’s) a series of root tensions that continue happening that maybe could be seen as quality of life from the residents versus the tourism economy. And also trying to… Really…if you want to package those tensions to understand what they are, what they are caused by, and you want to better understand the ramifications of the decisions that may be taken,” Gagnon said. “So, that has taken quite a bit of time. It was complex, and it’s not anything that’s new when you think about it. It’s just that we took the time to package and put together and kind of put a story around it.”

The next step, she said, is to meet with Town Manager James Smith to make sure what the planning staff is doing is what should happen to address those tensions.

Then, they’d likely move forward and meet with the Town Council and give them “several avenues” for short-term actions in a process that will likely take 18 months.

“Remember, longterm we’re talking more about: ‘Is it really the size of the structure that I’m worried about, the scale of it, or is it the rate of intensification? Or is it the fact that it does not have the ability to solve, or to help solve, or move towards solving, the housing situation,’” Gagnon said.

Gagnon said changes start with the Town Council for policy and end with the Town Council for decisions. In between those steps, staff works on regulatory policies, the Planning Board refines those policies with discussion and meeting work and varying degrees of public engagement.

“The way I do ordinance amendments, big amendments, (is): What’s the issue? What are we trying to solve? What could that look like? And then when we kind of agree, then we move in (toward) changing the ordinance. We don’t jump in and then when we start amending the ordinance, we realize there’s a lot of ‘you have to fix it,’” Gagnon said. “So basically to get the council to agree on the direction that they want to take depending on the type of amendment, work towards regulatory policies, and then—as we know what we’re doing—work with the Planning Board to kind of refine those, figure out how it’s going to actually work in reality, and then eventually you need to go back to Council.”

Planning Board member Guy Dunphey suggested workshops between the board members and councilors, a style of meeting together which allows more of a back and forth conversation than public comment.

“I personally feel workshops with Planning Board and the council would be really advantageous moving forward because, you know, we were up to our elbows in it,” Dunphey said, likely referring to moratorium data work and then a proposed graduated lodging amendment to the town’s land use ordinance (LUO) that was not pushed to voters by the Town Council earlier this summer.

There are going to be a lot of things happening, Gagnon said. One would be looking at lodging intensity again. They might focus on what the downtown looks like and what form that should take. Other topics could involve inclusionary zoning and what that phrase means to the town, lodging work, housing work.

“There’s areas that we’re looking at that we also would like to hire consultants if that’s the direction the council wants to take,” she said.

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LAND USE ORDINANCE RECOMMENDATION

The Bar Harbor Planning Board unanimously recommended voters support a land use amendment changing some definitions in the town’s land use ordinance, which is the ordinance that aligns town definitions with state definitions as well as place most of those definitions within the town’s primary definition section, Article XII, of its Land Use Ordinance.

Those changes had been created and then worked on by the town’s planning staff and the board.

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ELECTIONS AND MINUTES

Approximately 12 minutes of the meeting involved approving minutes from past meetings that could not be approved previously for a lack of a quorum and election of officers.

Ruth Eveland was reelected to chair by the board members. John Seavitt became vice chair. Teresa Wagner became secretary. Those positions last for a year.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

YouTube link to watch the meeting.

Bar Harbor website page about November elections.

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