Two October workshops will begin a process that could reshape lodging rules and address what the Town Council deems broader community concerns.
Sep 18, 2026
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop.
BAR HARBOR—Bar Harbor has spent nearly two years using a moratorium to pause new lodging development while the town considers how lodging fits into its future.
Now, town planning staff are laying out a path toward ending the moratorium, one that would address lodging rules in the short term while opening a broader conversation about housing, business diversity, development scale, and the character of the year-round community.
Planning Director Michele Gagnon and Housing and Community Planner Cali Martinez sat at the table in front of the Bar Harbor Town Council, September 15 and explained their current ideas of how to get the town out of its lodging moratorium, which has been in place—in various incarnations—since November 2024.
The moratorium pauses building or extensively renovating hotels and lodgings. It was originally for all of the town, which hosts Acadia National Park and many of its visitors. Its scope was modified this summer during its most recent renewal.
“We are here to present our recommended approach to ending the lodging moratorium,” Gagnon explained.
To do that, they are going to continue to focus on how the town controls lodging though lodging is only part of Bar Harbor’s complex puzzle, Martinez told the Town Council.
“The planning department’s strategic approach establishes a process to create an effective solution to end the lodging moratorium as its primary task. Our approach simultaneously acknowledges that lodging is one piece of the puzzle, that creating a solution that only addresses lodging will only partly address some of the community’s complex challenges and desires,” Martinez said.
The parts of a complex puzzle that Martinez listed included housing availability, visual and cultural identity, and creating a diverse year-round economy.
According to an Existing Conditions Report created by consultants hired by the town, in 2021, almost one-third of Bar Harbor’s workforce were in the professional, scientific and technical industries, which is year round. One-quarter were in accommodations and food service, which is mostly seasonal.
“And our approach aims to lay a process to achieve the development that supports residents’ quality of life. And in order to address this complexity, the planning department’s approach includes two types of solutions,” Martinez said.
Quality of life was not defined in the presentation.
THE APPROACHES
The first approach was qualified as short-term solution where lodging is the sole focus and the primary action would be in a land use amendment. Land use amendments have specific processes and timelines that are laid out in the town’s rules.
“This solution is meant to get us out of the moratorium by effectively providing the community with enough protection from future lodging development which we are calling the short-term win,” Martinez said.
She continued, “The second type of solution incorporates a variety of community concerns, desires, and goals, and incorporates how they interact and affect each other where the focus could include lodging, among other factors.”
Martinez said that the comprehensive solutions focus on various factors “that fuel the the community’s root tensions such as housing or diverse commercial growth. Focusing on multiple factors will ensure the end result is the type of desired development that adds to the community’s quality of life which we are calling the long-term gains.”
ROOT TENSIONS
“So, to get to the solutions that Cali spoke about, we think the Council first needs to agree on the problems, the root tensions it wants to address. So to do this, we are proposing to look at the problem from a systems level frameworks perspective,” Gagnon said. “This framework would have three components: challenges, vision, and root tensions.”
The challenges, Gagnon said, will be presented to the Town Council as a list compiled from planning staff from things it heard through the moratorium process, public engagement, and other town efforts.
The Town Council would then review that list of challenges and make changes, Gagnon said, to make sure they accurately reflect the issues and experiences of the community.”
Next, the planning staff would present the vision, which has been established through the Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan.
“That vision is not captured solely by the comp plan vision statement, but rather it is reflected across the themes and values presented throughout the comprehensive plan,” Gagnon said.
It is meant to provide the overall direction for how the community wants to grow for what the community wants to be.
“Then there are the root tensions. The root tensions are fundamental conflicts between two or more valid but opposing values and priorities. Unlike a simple problem that has a straightforward fix, a root tension is deeper seated within the community. By identifying and recognizing these root tensions, we believe that the Council will be able to develop policy solution to treat the real problems and prevent Band-aid solutions as well as find sustainable compromises,” Gagnon continued.
The root tensions that will be presented to Council in the “systems level framework document” are not conclusions, she said.
“They are just our current hypothesis about the underlying issues that may be driving the concerns we heard,” she said.
Those four root tensions the staff identified are: design scale; local ownership and small businesses; diversity of businesses and uses; and housing availability.
“At the October workshop, the Council will determine whether the proposed tensions resonate with the community’s priorities or whether different priorities should be the focus instead,” Gagnon said.
ROLES AND POLICY STEPS
The Town Council will establish the direction and then the planning staff will develop and evaluate specific policy options.
“So to summarize, we see the vision as our community’s dream home and we know what we want the finished home to look and feel like. But before we can build it, we need to agree on the foundations. Identifying and agreeing on the systems level framework on the challenges and retention facing Bar Harbor provides that foundation. Once we have a shared understanding of the problems we need to address, we can determine what needs to be constructed first, what can come next, and how each piece fits together to ultimately achieve this vision,” Gagnon said.
She stressed that the entire process is meant to be Town Council led from its beginning to the end.
The Council would identify the challenges via the systems-level framework. That creates a policy direction for the work staff will do. Staff will create a policy framework that creates a set of potential short and long-term solutions and approaches.
The Council will consider those potential solutions.
“Third, Council would evaluate those options and select policy solutions that would best address the identified root tensions and would advance the policy. Fourth, we would translate those policy solutions into a detailed regulatory framework which ultimately, working in coordination with the Planning Board, could become ordinances between step three and four. Depending on the subject matter, we may seek community and or industry expert input. And in certain cases, we would need to loop back to Council to report and could ask for further refinement of the policy solutions,” Gagnon said.
Then staff and the Bar Harbor Planning Board would translate those policies into language for the town’s ordinances.
“This is an important point in the process for the Planning Board. Their role is to help ensure that the proposed language is clear, enforceable, and administrable, and that it works cohesively with the town’s existing ordinance. The Planning Board can also help identify potential conflicts, unintended consequences, or areas where additional clarification may be needed before the ordinance moves forward. In this way, the Planning Board’s role is focused on helping ensure that the policy direction established by Council is translated into regulations that are practical and workable,” Gagnon said.
OCTOBER WORKSHOP
At the October workshop the Town Council will talk about the framework and challenges, vision, and root tensions.
“The second primary portion is where Council would deliberate to identify the root tensions, also referred to as the policy focus areas to anchor the policy direction for the short-term lodging specific policy. And if time allows, Council could further refine this policy direction or policy focus areas based on some policy questions that would be provided by staff for further refinement,” Martinez said.
The workshop could also focus on short-term policy direction such as modifying the graduated lodging scale amendment, which the Town Council did not move forward to voters this summer.
“The edits would primarily focus on what should be kept in this amendment, what aspects should be modified, what aspects should be removed and/or added,” Martinez said.
She mentioned examples of policy focus areas and what could happen to help staff craft potential changes.
“For example, let’s say that the Council during the first workshop in October is interested to address the root tension, design, and scale as one of the policy focus areas to focus those edits. Some examples of policy questions that could help refine this policy focus area could be along the lines of what is the community’s desired visual character for different areas of town. Is it the same in certain areas or is it different? And what specific built environment related factors heavily impact that desired character? And are there existing examples that exemplify that desired character? And what does it mean to provide guidelines or restrictions to create that desired visual character without being overly restrictive or prescriptive?” Martinez said.
Another example she offered was if the Town Council wanted to look at the root tension of housing availability and its relationship to the graduated lodging scale amendment.
Some of the policy questions could include, she said, “does every new commercial development have a responsibility to provide on-site employee housing, especially when that new use demolishes housing units? Could this new commercial use contribute to the development of attainable housing in other ways? If so, what would an equitable solution look like without being overly restrictive towards new commercial growth?”
COUNCIL DISCUSSION AND PLANNING BOARD UPDATE
”There was a lot of use of the word community. When does the community get to weigh in on this?” Councilor David Kief asked. “It sounds like it’s going to be just the Council going back and forth to the Planning Board.”
The first workshop will be the councilors, but the public can attend, just as the public can attend all meetings and workshops except for executive session portions.
“We have some direction in terms of policy solution, then we’re going to be involving the community at that point as those are being developed,” Gagnon said of this process.
“My point is, I think the community involvement early on would be beneficial for us as Council members to be able to guide this process,” Kief explained.
“Absolutely. And we can schedule that as the Council sees appropriate and necessary to gather that input,” Town Manager James Smith said.
Smith also stressed that there will be public comment and engagement throughout the process and ultimately it will wind up in the hands of the town’s voters.
“I would also just say to push back a little bit on that,” Council Chair Maya Caines said to Kief. “I think we are hearing and getting a lot of input from the community and have been for years. I mean, the comprehensive plan has a lot of this information. We’ve heard public comment and have received emails and have individual conversations around the moratorium. So, I feel like yes with this policy, of course we want input from the public as we’re refining it. But from my perspective, I feel like I have heard a lot—and us as a Council have heard a lot—from people about what they’re looking for, what their concerns are.”
Gagnon stressed that the town’s planning department likes engagement and believes in it.
“We do have a lot of data for the Sustainable Tourism Task Force and other things,” Kief said. “I think it’s good to rehear from the public.”
“It’s necessary work. Thank you for doing it,” Councilor Steven Boucher said. “I mean at some point we need to start making decisions.”
The first workshop will be October 6. The second workshop will be October 27.
PLANNING BOARD DISCUSSION
At the Planning Board meeting the next day—September 17—Gagnon told that board’s members, “It went well.”
She also spoke to the comprehensive plan’s vision being woven into the document in places beyond its vision statement as well as the concept of “root tensions.”
There will be more to come, she said.
”I think the problems are known,” Gagnon said.
At the second workshop, discussion will be more focused on the graduated lodging scale, Gagnon told Planning Board members.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
All slides via the presentation by Martinez and Gagnon.
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