Asticou Plans Approved
Mount Desert Selectboard hopes to find resolution to gallery damages
MOUNT DESERT—The owner of the 133-year-old Asticou Inn received unanimous approval at a two-hour June 12 Planning Board meeting for changes to the Peabody Drive hotel.
The project removes the tennis courts. The indoor restaurant remains and will be open to the public. Outdoor large events will be a thing of the 1884 inn’s past.
“In the last ten years on the board, that is easily the biggest project that we’ve reviewed," said Planning Board Chairman William Hanley.
The renovation adds 15 guest cottages and 18 suites and a new outdoor pool. Previous employee housing will now be guest rooms. The Bird Bank and Blue Spruce, which are slightly down the drive will be rentals. The extra rooms (92 in all) require extra parking, which was designed by G.F. Johnston & Associates.
In May, the Bangor Daily News’ Bill Trotter wrote, “The inn is one of three lodging properties on MDI that have been acquired in recent years by hotelier Tim Harrington, founding partner of Kennebunkport Resort Collection, a company that owns 10 high-end lodging properties in Kennebunkport.
“Harrington bought the Asticou Inn last year for just under $7 million.”
In 2020, Harrington also purchased Southwest Harbor’s Claremont Hotel. He also owns the Salt Cottages in Hulls Cove.
The Asticou, owned then by A.C. Savage had burned to the ground close to 11 p.m., thanks to a kitchen fire in 1900, guests escaping in nightclothes. It was considered a modern and well-remodeled hotel at the time. It reopened the next summer.
At the Planning Board meeting, Greg Johnston, civil engineer, spoke to concerns about sea surge and erosion and any potential impacts on the new structures, saying that the lowest structure was still more than 40 feet above mean high water.
This was of particular concern to Rick Savage, who said the current water line has already eroded. Trees have sloughed off, he said. Though not opposed to the project, he wanted “thoughtful consideration” to occur.
Savage recommended that “this whole shorefront be reinforced with granite or stone to prevent future erosion. Sure, it’s going to cost money, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what else we’re going to be spending here.”
Hanley questioned the similarity of the structures when viewed from the harbor, which will be tiered and whose uniformity will be broken up by different aspects of the landscape.
“That’s an aesthetic we don’t yet have,” he said.
Some others attending also worried about the visual aspects of the site, particularly in fall and winter when there is less vegetation. Employee housing was also a concern for some attendees who were told that the LLC owns multiple sites where it could house employees. Those employees would then have to drive in. The inn has been a staple of the community and a landmark.
According to the Asticou’s website, “The history of the Asticou-Inn begins with its namesake. Wabanaki Indians guiding French explorer Samuel de Champlain to the first island in 1604 called it Pemetic, meaning ‘range of mountains.' Because of its high barren peaks, a prominent coastal landmark for seafarers, Champlain named it Isle des Mounts Deserts. He named the other island Ise au Haut because of its height. When Europeans first landed on the shores of Mount Desert Island, the sakom (sagamore of chieftain) of the greater Mount Desert Island area was Asticou.
“Asticou is first mentioned in a 1608 English document as headman of an Indian village of what became known as the River of Mount Desert–later segmented and renamed Union River, Union Bay River, and Blue Hill Bay. Five years later, his name appears in French records as the sakom who welcomed the French to his summer village on the southeastern shore of Somes Sound.”
Shortly before 1800, the Savage family settled in Northeast Harbor. By the middle of the century, Augustus Chase Savage and Emily Manchester Savage built the Cranberry Lodge, one of the inn’s buildings. According to the website, “In 1870, the Savages began housing boarders, and so began the tradition of lodging at the Asticou-Inn.”
THE GALLERY AT SOMES SOUND AND TEAMSTERS’ CONTRACT
Executive sessions took up the bulk of the Mount Desert Select Board meeting on Monday night, but afterward, the group approved the collective bargaining agreement for Teamsters Local 340 with one abstention and also agreed to craft a settlement agreement upon the receipt of the three pieces of material from 1112 Main Street LLC.
According to town attorney Andy Hamilton, there was an unfortunate blockage of the town’s pump by rags that got stuck in the pump, which caused an overflow of sewer/stormwater onto the LLC’s property in Somesville. According to the property owners, this resulted in approximately $27,000 in damages.
The address is the Gallery at Somes Sound. At the meeting it was said that the LLC is comprised of the Fernalds: Lauri, William, Thomas, and Barry.
The conditional recommendation is that the Fernalds’ LLC has to submit a notice of claim to the town, a certification of the damage to the property and then a notice of property insurance coverage and any deductible amount. The third condition was that the property owner provide notice that there is now a backflow collector to mitigate the risk of future damage.
If those conditions are satisfied, Hamilton said that he would craft a settlement agreement, review terms with the town manager and public works director, though Hamilton said it isn’t completely clear that there is responsibility of the town because the drain was not in disrepair.
“We’ve never had this happen before. That’s one of the things that upsets me,” Tom Fernald said. The building has been there for 30 plus years, he said, and been there through many storms, he stressed. “For us to say that we’re responsible for this is bull crap. It really is….There was a malfunction in the apparatus there. You don’t have a generator. I would say the town is fully responsible for this.”
Hamilton said that it isn’t clear under the law if the town does have full responsibility. He further explained what the town needed to move forward.
“The town just wants to have the information for its records,” Hamilton said, as well as a copy of the denial letter from the insurance company. The notice of claim, he said, is one-paragraph and part of the requirements of Maine’s Tort Claims Act. Laurie Fernald said the backflow had already been installed and the town has a copy of that.
“There are a million hoops that have to be jumped through,” said one member of the Selectboard, but those hoops, he stressed, didn’t mean that the town wouldn’t offer a settlement.
BOARD AND COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATIONS
The Selectboard members also took care of its annual board and committee appointments, which included multiple resignations, including Peter Cuffari, Kathleen Miller, and Wendell Oppewall from the Broadband Committee.
The Broadband Committee is likely going to disband because it has achieved the goal of offering broadband service to all the community. Town Manager Durlin Lunt said he thought the committee should be congratulated for its good work, for achieving its goals and receiving multiple grants to help cover for that service.
The Selectboard also accepted the resignation of Lilian Andrews from the Zoning Board of Appeals and Gerard Miller from the LUZO Advisory Committee.
FIRE DEPARTMENT
A slow generator delivery, which prevented the last section of the fire station from being renovated, has resulted in the Selectboard approving revisions to the fire department plan, which had been agreed upon May 28.
The agreement is with Hedefine Engineering & Design, Inc. for construction administration services on the Northeast Harbor fire station project.
According to a June 11 memo from Chief Mike Bender, “The purpose of the revision is to continue with both construction administration and site observation services at their current rate.”
The cost to continue doing so is $11,900. The town will pay that through its contingency fund, which has a balance of $208,682.
“Now that the old generator has been removed,” Bender wrote, “King’s Construction can begin work on our decontamination room, which is the last unfinished portion of the project.”
Vice Chair Wendy Littlefield asked about fire department coverage at the Somesville Station. Chief Mike Bender said that when the fire department goes down to three firefighters rather than four on duty, they tend not to man the Somesville Station. This is currently the case because of personnel shortages and overtime costs.
Littlefield said the town worked hard to get coverage for Somesville and she’d hate to see it not covered because of budget or overtime pay. Bender said it would probably only be the next two weeks for this configuration of personnel and then the coverage will occur again.
The Selectboard also approved a $15,000 Maine Department of Public Safety EMS Stabilization Program Grant agreement. Deputy Chief John Lennon applied for the grant, which will be used for “training aids to directly support the field care of our EMS providers,” according to a June 12 memo from Bender.
“These items will train both BLS and ALS providers in seldom used but critical skill sets,” Bender wrote. “They will also create a patient-care-centric team through an understanding of both BLS and ALS skills.”
OTHER BUSINESS
The Selectboard approved a Public Space Memorial Planting Application Permit 9-2024, which allows the planting of a small (24” - 30”) white pine Tree in the memory of Edith Mann at Suminsby Park.
The Board approved the replacement of Northeast Harbor Mooring Floats top and bottom chains by Alvah B. Barge Service Inc. The cost is $6,633.55. The money will be taken from the Northeast Harbor Mooring/Floats capital improvement line, which has a balance of $369,164.46
It also approved a road deicing salt contract with New England Salt for winter 2024-2025.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
For an interview between Rick Savage and Jennifer Steen Booher, click here.
To order a copy of the Chebacco, which talks about the Asticou, click here.
A Chebacco chat with Rick Savage is below.
To watch the meeting.
To watch the town’s investment meeting:
To watch the town’s Planning Board meeting:
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here.
I just checked my calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1 for I initially thought the report of Mount Desert approving the removal of employee housing at the Asticou by an out of area conglomerate was an April Fools joke? When I kept reading and discovered that not only had they allowed that they also allowed significant expansion of the inn's carrying capacity I just knew it had to be an April's Fool spoof. Lets see you cut employee housing on one hand and increase employee requirements with the other. And then, of course, there's the matter of resistance to,the construction of modestly priced homes for local working people. I don't care what my calendar says I just know this article has to be a joke!
What a shame that the Asticou is removing the outdoor dining. Guess they’re maximizing their profit.