Letter From Our Readers

December 22

THANKFUL FOR A MORATORIUM

Now is the time for action!

We would like to thank the Bar Harbor Town Council for taking up the hard work of enacting a moratorium and looking seriously at the multiple impacts that each new hotel has on our community. Now is the time for further action!

Bar Harbor has blown past the point where there is positive value to the town from new hotels. Now we believe the impact on the quality of life in the town is mostly negative.

Bar Harbor is not alone with these impacts. Portland, Maine has instituted a hotel moratorium. Amsterdam, in April of this year, announced a ban on new hotels in the city. Only when a hotel goes out of business will a new hotel be allowed, and the number of rooms must not exceed that of the hotel that it is replacing, among other requirements.

Recently, we were in Camden and Belfast, and noticed once again how charming and thriving these downtowns are. They have struggles with traffic in the summer season, but we were struck by the fact that there are hardly any hotels to be found in the downtown area. The difference with Bar Harbor was striking. I asked a shopkeeper how that was possible, and she replied, “It’s in our zoning and regulations. We don’t want hotels downtown.”

We think Bar Harbor’s plan, which seeks to put most development downtown, is off the mark. Our downtown is compact and our infrastructure has many problems. We are overwhelmed with traffic and congestion for months of every year. The only kind of development that should be allowed downtown is residential and small commercial interests. There should not be any additional transient lodging development downtown. Perhaps there should not be any more hotel development at all. According to a list provided to a resident by Angie Chamberlain, there are already approximately 3,500 rooms available via hotels, inns and B&Bs in the town of Bar Harbor which greatly increases the number of people and automobiles downtown. Even though they are not all situated downtown, they certainly impact the downtown.

We urge councilors to be forward-looking, and take bold steps. You have capped vacation rentals. You have worked to limit cruise ships. The continued almost frenzied pace of development of every available lot into transient accommodations is eroding the character of our town, adding to congestion and traffic, diminishing our housing stock, risking our well being and safety, and further impacting the quality of life for locals and the visitor experience for tourists.

Our specific suggestions:

1. Extend the emergency moratorium into a regular moratorium for the following 6 months.

During that time:

• have the Planning department reach out to other coastal tourist towns in Maine to discover what mechanisms they use to keep transient accommodations out of their downtown and limited in number;

• establish rules/ordinances to cap the number of transient accommodations at no more than we currently have with similar stipulations to those put in place in Amsterdam;

• make the protection of residential neighborhoods of paramount importance. As one councilor suggested at a recent meeting, go through neighborhoods street by street and identify those areas deserving of special residential neighborhood protections;

• develop rules/regulations/ordinances to keep hotel and other developments away from places where children and families congregate: the school, the ballfields, the Y, and Kids Corner. Think of the dangers of children running across the street from the Y to the ballfields with increased traffic because of new hotels possibly being allowed on the corner of Main and Park, or elsewhere on Park, bringing vastly increased traffic to an area of town that should be preserved predominantly for the use of locals;

• take seriously the traffic impacts along Eden Street and Mount Desert, where children are crossing the street from school and walking home in the afternoons, down Mount Desert Street where they must cross at several crosswalks where cars often speed along; and where locals trying to get home must enter the downtown;

• look at the situation with parking at the only supermarket in town. Is it true that Hannaford lost a lot that they had used for employee parking this year because they were outbid by a nearby new hotel that wanted it for their own purposes? Is that why it was almost impossible this year to find parking at Hannaford, and so many people became frustrated and angry? Is this yet another impact of hotel development that goes under the radar?

2. To those who require more data to be convinced and who advocate for a regional approach, we say the following:

• Please do not take a lot of time and planning department energy trying to gather just the statistics that you need to be convinced. Walk the neighborhoods and talk to locals; they will tell you the houses that have been lost in their neighborhoods.

• Look at the apartment buildings in town that once housed year-round residents and then were purchased and became seasonal employee housing, resulting in the eviction of all those residents. We know of at least two: the complex between Ledgelawn Avenue and School Street (18 apartments lost), and the former Acadia Apartments on West Street extension. There are likely more. These places provided stable affordable rental apartments for those who did not wish/could not afford to be homeowners. Now they are lost to those residents.

• A regional approach is a lofty idea, but it is one with little chance of enacting meaningful change for years. We are not one town on this island, we are many, with similar but different pressures. Enacting short-term rental regulations was a wonderful thing for Bar Harbor; other towns are still struggling to agree on the problem. The towns have discussed school consolidation for ages; it is still under discussion. There are many examples of the struggle to enact meaningful regional solutions. We might believe that is the best approach, but it will be years in the making. We do not have the time. Let’s be pragmatic and deal with the issues before us that are significantly impacting our town. Bar Harbor must lead! We cannot control what other towns choose to do.

3. Look to the town itself for vacant buildings that might be converted to housing. There is a small apartment complex (four apartments perhaps?) on the corner of Des Isle and First South Street. For several years, it has appeared vacant. This summer it looked like perhaps there was some activity. Can the town come up with a way to incentivize the owner to work with the town or the Island Housing Trust or some other entity to create housing there? On the corner of Park Street and Ash Street sits a vacant building that once housed a church. It was sold and has sat empty for years. Is a developer waiting for the opportunity to build a hotel there, or seasonal employee housing? Is this a place the town could investigate and try to incentivize its use for year round housing? There are buildings around town in similar situations. Can the town take an inventory and develop a priority list, and try to work with owners? When we were working with others (collectively known as Local Solutions) to create housing for young adults with disabilities in our town, St. Saviour’s Church donated its parish house to our group. The building was in terrible condition, but we were fortunate to have fantastic community support and to partner with amazing nonprofits to get the building completely renovated and turned into apartments for individuals with intellectual disabilities (with staffing). The development of the Parish House (completed in 2017) was a huge success story. We need to incentivize and encourage more successes.

Thank you for your consideration of our concerns, hopes and aspirations for this town.

Sharon Knopp and Enoch Albert, Bar Harbor

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