Letters From Our Readers.

Elissa Chesler. Cara Ryan.

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Quick Note: This letter came in Sunday night after our letters came out earlier in the day. We’ve decided because of timeliness concerns to put it out today (Monday). For those wondering, the Bar Harbor Town Council will be discussing the lodging moratorium tonight. More details about the meeting are here. We also received another letter from Cara Ryan right after we sent this story out. We’ve updated to include it at 12:03 p.m., December 29.

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A LETTER TO THE BAR HARBOR TOWN COUNCIL ABOUT THE LODGING MORATORIUM

To the Members of the Town Council,

I am writing to express my personal view as a citizen of Bar Harbor in favor of extending the moratorium on transient accommodations to allow residents to vote before more lodging development occurs. The proposed LUO amendments won’t address all the conditions that triggered the moratorium, but they ensure that the scale of new lodging remains within presently intended ranges.

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”—RUSH

The current LUO was written and approved by voters under different economic circumstances, when recent extreme growth in tourism was not anticipated. It is therefore insufficient to protect the community from over-development that burdens community members to support extensive public services, puts pressure on public spaces, and places burden on residents to drive elsewhere to meet their needs as their own town becomes increasingly less accessible and functional.

The dramatic increase in visitation presents economic opportunities for the town, its business community and the State. We are told by the tourism management consultants that this increase is inevitable. One might conclude that we should meet it with increased development, but given our limited undeveloped land and overall capacity, we will NEVER fully meet the demand, and much will be sacrificed in the attempt. We therefore must decide HOW MUCH demand should be met in Bar Harbor and how much to spare for the community, environment and visitor experience.

One vision of Bar Harbor is to allow maximum development of lodging in town, in a district that also contains our grocery stores, post office, government offices, banks, pharmacy, churches, schools, library and medical services. This would entail radical redevelopment of Bar Harbor, with the acquisition and consolidation of contiguous lots. This development pattern is commonly preceded by declining condition of the structures until the adjoined parcels are redeveloped as larger commercial properties. Our current LUO allows this, and the recent explosive growth of the industry and patterns of land ownership makes this type of development imminent. The proposed LUO amendments will restore constraints on scale and provide some protection to outlying areas, but will continue to allow large-scale redevelopment in town without further action.

Another vision of Bar Harbor is of smaller scale establishments, with lodging and small businesses tied to housing in a walkable community serving both residents and tourists. When accompanied by lodging development in other towns, along with improved transportation services, such a community remains an appealing destination, and spreads the benefits of tourism across a wider region, with greater capacity to provide the volume of services required. With no local option tax in Maine, such an approach will spread the costs and benefits of tourism across more communities, enabling them to participate directly in the tourism economy and potentially cultivating greater support to keep more revenue in the communities that bear the costs. These outlying towns present growth opportunities for business community members, as does appropriately scaled redevelopment within Bar Harbor. Residents have expressed support for this type of development, whether by imposing design review standards to make a large lodging establishment look like a row of smaller buildings typical of a New England turn of the century town, or through public comments advocating for an actual village with a variety of small businesses interspersed with housing. The revenue provided by our robust tourism industry could be the engine of such development, provided that we carefully adopt the types of policies that enable and encourage it, while removing the impediments that allow these businesses to succeed.

Some believe there should be no more growth in Bar Harbor, and these residents deserve clear and respectful explanations of how and why additional lodging growth is beneficial to them. Recent court decisions have affirmed that the people of Bar Harbor are not REQUIRED to set or retain policies that maximize economic opportunity or enable more development than desired. The recent 1^st district court decision also notes that the town’s legislative process does not require the same standard of evidence that a judicial process demands, i.e. facts and data are helpful guides, but the court has emphasized that residents do not need to provide evidence in support of preferences. Moreover, past data do not inform our likely future state.

On the issue of “singling out” an industry, unlike other aspects of tourism and hospitality, the lodging industry, and potential scale of development it entails, places greater demands on land use than other commercial development and thus requires a distinct approach.

The planning board’s split decision on whether to recommend continuation of the moratorium was paradoxical. The board needed to consider whether requirements for a continued moratorium were met, and whether the statement of those conditions needed revision. The efforts made to bring rigor to the process were laudable, but discussion became mired in a complex rubric of claims (“whereas” clauses), and whether they could be revised, finally ending in confusion over the purpose of voting on whether the LUO was sufficient. Ultimately, planning board members concluded that LUO amendments were indeed needed, but suggested that literal consideration of the point-by-point claims compelled them to vote otherwise.

Some have expressed concern that the focus on lodging is detracting from work on housing. This is a false dichotomy. Good lodging land use policy can protect housing opportunities by limiting competing pressures on developable land, and can provide creative opportunities to capitalize housing production in a manner that creates a vibrant community. Such solutions can leverage our popularity as a destination to meet our community needs. The people deserve an opportunity to have these discussions so they may develop a shared vision and implement necessary policy changes. Without such protection of this opportunity, we will default to the maximal state allowed by our present LUO.

Please allow the citizens of Bar Harbor the time needed to vote on critical land use policy amendments, and continue toward development of a shared vision for the future of Bar Harbor.

Sincerely,

Elissa Chesler

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A LETTER TO THE BAR HARBOR TOWN COUNCIL ABOUT THE LODGING MORATORIUM

Dear Councilors,

I’ve written before about the new guest room definition. It may seem like water under the bridge that we had no warning of this critical change in all those amendment hearings, but I would hope that would carry some weight in your decision to extend the lodging moratorium and pause development until residents have a chance to vote in something closer to what they really want. What we have now isn’t that. Our new “guest room”—lodging’s basic unit—undermines to the point of absurdity the limits on lodging size carefully established, zone by zone, over decades. Now, so long as they’re within setbacks & other looser parameters, it’s up to developers to determine the true size of their lodgings by creative packing of these “rooms.” We’ve given the industry a very sweet assist that runs counter to what the majority of residents (& many board & committee members), over & over, say they want for Bar Harbor--serious prioritizing of housing and year-round community before it’s too late. We owe it to voters to wait until we can get our LUO in order to lift the moratorium.

Another reason: current work from the planning department is taking us in the right direction to support clearly expressed mandates. We need to wait for the June election to codify this work too. I personally think much more could and should be done—why, for instance, can’t we review a l l predominantly residential zones and at least consider removing lodging as an allowed use in them? This is neither draconian nor NIMBYism in a housing crisis with so little developable land—it merely gives residential housing a fighting chance in a highly competitive town.

Some argue that lodging is totally separate from housing. This rings as hollow as our town in winter. Yes, there are other contributors to seasonal vacancies, but we’re being hollowed out by hyper seasonality in every way selling short-term experiences in Bar Harbor can replace its long-term life as a town. We also hear complaints about the many non-profits & their seemingly less restricted expansion, but don’t most of these provide vital services to residents (whether it’s the library, the Ys, or the hospital) and all bring more year-round residents (provided they can find a place to live). You don’t have to be “anti-tourist” to see the difference and ask reasonable questions like How much more lodging can so small & fragile a town bear? Do we care about preserving the scale of Bar Harbor? I do, and I think many others do as well. We’re in a critical moment and how we use or fail to use our LUO now will determine the town’s future.

In a recent BDN article re-posted by Carrie Jones (Bar Harbor Story) about Acadia setting a new visitation record this year (over 4 million), Bill Trotter cites a senior ANP official telling their advisory commission that “how high tourist traffic in the park could rise most likely depends on how much tourist lodging is available.” In other words, if we build it, they will come. We can’t control what neighboring towns do, but as the gateway to Acadia, Bar Harbor can at the very least protect itself from becoming nothing more than a gateway.

Thank you for your time,

Cara Ryan

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