Lodging Moratorium Extended as Bar Harbor Continues to Collect Data
Council Extends Lodging Freeze, Sparking Discussion on Development and Housing
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Window Panes Home and Garden.
BAR HARBOR—Bar Harbor’s moratorium on multiple lodging types has been extended for another 180 days.
“I don’t think it is time to put a stop to the moratorium,” Councilor Joe Minutolo said during a Tuesday night town council meeting. “We’re right in the middle of it.”
On July 1, the Bar Harbor Town Council officially extended a modified moratorium on lodging. The extension means that there will be no construction and authorization and review of the lodging uses specified in the moratorium’s language. The extension follows two emergency moratoriums and the last regular moratorium, which means that any potential lodging development has been frozen since November 19, 2024.
During that time, the town’s planning staff and planning board have collected data and had meetings to look at, according to the moratorium itself, the “development and operation of certain transient accommodations, including impacts on health and safety, environmental quality, quality of life, adjacent property values, size, and the approval process, especially for accommodations approved without Planning Board review.”
The planning board has met for moratorium workshops three times in February, March, and April. The work is categorized as “approximately 75 percent complete.”
ORDER FOR THE EXTENSION
“We’ve been collecting data and information” that was based on the declaration of the moratorium, said Planning Director Michele Gagnon during an update on the town’s progress toward the moratorium’s purpose, which is laid out in its “whereas” clauses.
Data collected includes the number of guest rooms and maximum guest capacity, conversions from residential use to lodging, mapping of lodging by district and neighborhood, mapping locations of short-term and long-term rentals, mapping areas serviced by public sewer and water.
“We expect to present findings to the town council sometime in the fall,” Gagnon said.
THE MODIFIED MORATORIUM
On February 5, 2025, the town council voted to enact a 180-day moratorium on multiple lodging types. Since then, the town’s planning board and staff have been working to collect data relevant to the “whereas” clauses in that moratorium. That moratorium took effect in early March.
While the moratorium is enacted there can be no legal building or approval of six types of lodging varying in size from single family dwellings with three guest rooms to much larger accommodations.
During public comment on Tuesday, Diane Vreeland said that she would prefer that all lodging including vacation rentals and campgrounds were included so that the town could truly understand the total impact.
“I think it’s just common sense” that all vacation rentals, cottages, and campgrounds should be included when looking at impacts, Vreeland said.
THE CHANGES
The moratorium language before the council itself was modified, which concerned Eben Salvatore, who is managing a project to tear down and rebuild the Park Entrance Motel. That project, which would raze and rebuild the aging 1967 motel is scheduled to go before the town’s planning board, July 2.
The proposal would be for a 25-suite, four-floor structure, Salvatore said, and it would also rebuild the pier at the same location on the site. The pier had been destroyed last winter. Salvatore said the hotel’s rebuild would be at a lower scale than currently exists and get rid of several nonconformities.
He also stressed that he and other representatives for the project had talked to the planning staff multiple times about the potential rebuild during multiple meetings “while fully understanding that the moratorium clearly only prohibited the CEO (code enforcement officer) from issuing building permits.”
Their site plan review application, he said, was submitted based on that language. That language did not expressly prohibit the planning board from issuing building permits.
“The draft language you are reviewing this evening is obviously a reaction to our site plan,” Salvatore said of the new language. “And very clearly meant to halt our progress. After months of working with the planner, CEO, and the town, you are now proposing that the planning board can’t advance the project that reduces the density of existing transient accommodations.”
The moratorium now has language that adds that the planning board, not just the code enforcement officer, will not “accept, process, review, approve, authorize, or issue any applications, petitions, plans, permits, licenses, or requests” for those lodging uses mentioned in the moratorium.
“Can you talk a little bit about the new language that we’re looking at tonight?” Councilor Earl Brechlin asked Gagnon.
“It’s come to our attention that there are things that we could have better defined,” Gagnon said, “in trying to capture some loose ends.”
The moratorium’s authority is much broader than the CEO, but also the planning board and so they wrote that into the amendment, Gagnon said.
PUBLIC COMMENT AND DISCUSSION
Though the council was unanimous in its decision to extend the moratorium, public comment included both supporters and those who did not want it to continue.
Kevin Knopp said he thought it should be extended and that the timing makes sense and that the moratorium should not end this summer.
”August 3 is not October or November when we’ll have a lot more information,” he said.
“I think this is a good project. I think this is a good thing for the community,” Knopp continued. “I think it has a lot of potential to bring the community together in the end if we do it right.”
Knopp also thinks the town should give the Sustainable Tourism Task Force a chance to get going.
Sharon Knopp said she was impressed by the work of the staff and planning board to dig deep and figure out how to preserve neighborhoods and move forward with adequate safeguards. She also said that she thinks Bar Harbor can be both a tourism community and a year-round community.
“We have to make sure the tourist part is not hollowing out our community,” she said. “I beg you not to end the moratorium but extend it so the work can continue.”
Business owner and former planning board chair Tom St.Germain said that both the police and fire chief have said that calls peaked in 2018 and 2019 and that the emergency services are not stressed. He worried that the town’s public works director has still not met with the planning board to report about infrastructure related to the moratorium. The sustainable tourism task force also has not met, he said.
If the town doesn’t receive data until the later part of fall, which is December, it could create a rush to enact any changes in the town’s land use ordinance that would have to go to voters in June. St.Germain also mentioned hotels being built in Ellsworth, which only adds to traffic congestion.
“There is not enough supply of housing,” he said, mentioning that other town staff have referenced that as a problem worldwide.
Others worried about the erosion of neighborhoods, including Ellen Grover and new councilor David Kief.
“I’ve been an advocate for protecting the viability of our year round community,” Grover said. “I remember when we had four full first-grade class rooms with 25 in each one. This year we had 30 students in our whole first grade. What happened? A major developed arrived with a vision to turn our town into a first-class resort. Over time, little by little, he succeeded. What was once a vibrant year-round community became a seasonal destination.”
She categorized the development as unrestrained.
According to the Maine CDC, birth rates in Maine aren’t decreasing just in Hancock County, but across the state. In 2001 there were 495 live births in Hancock County. By 2010 it had decreased to 464. By 2023, that number decreased to 383. In the entire state, that number has decreased from 13,751 in 2001 to 11,621. The declining birth rate has often been linked to the closure of rural maternity wards, such as the one at Mount Desert Island Hospital.
At the same time, Bar Harbor’s population has increased from 5,235 to an estimated 5,326, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the Bar Harbor 2022 Existing Conditions Report commissioned by the town and released in October 2022, residents over 65 make up approximately 19% of that total population, growing by 32% between 2011 and 2019.
Also according to the report’s summary, “there are a higher proportion of children, adolescents, and those in the 45-64 age bracket compared to the country.”
“Growing up in this town I was in one of those classes with thirty kids. We’re at this point because of this development. I know I’m speaking from feelings right now. All the data that you’re going to accumulate isn’t going to change what’s happened to this town,” Kief said.
Kief added that he hopes the data proves that the town has to slow things down.
Council Chair Val Peacock said, however, that they don’t know what the data will say.
The data has not been publicly released yet or fully analyzed. That’s expected to occur in the fall, Gagnon and Town Manager James Smith said.
“If the work does progress faster, we could very well be back here sooner,” Smith said but he was cautious in creating false expectations. He worried about incorrect information “muddying up the communication stream.”
“I think the data would be helpful for all of us, not just people who are against hotels,” Peacock said.
The current moratorium, Peacock said, speaks to the qualitative data.
“I know feelings are real and feelings are valid,” she said, but when it comes to policy decisions, it’s important to have data. “To get out of reacting, we need to be able to have people come in and talk about their feelings and then talk about what to do with that in a really data driven way.”
WORK TOWARD AFFORDABLE AND AVAILABLE HOUSING
Councilor Steve Boucher said there has been a lot of great work has been done by the planning staff and he worried that it’s not going to be enough again in November when the moratorium expires again.
“I’d like to see the same passion and urgency going into affordable housing for the community,” Boucher said. “That’s a concern of mine: when do we finally reach the end.”
“Unbridled development got us to this point,” Kief said. “Keep going the way we’re going isn’t going to fix anything and it’s not going to fix our housing crisis either.”
Vice Chair Maya Caines agreed with Boucher and said the council needs to see concrete analysis by the fall.
“I think the work is really important and it needs to be done, but we’re kind of in this liminal space right now,” she said.
Brechlin said nothing goes toward affordable housing more than stopping the erosion of neighborhoods. “I think this is appropriate and I appreciate the language clarifying.”
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FALL
Peacock asked about the presentation in the fall.
It will be an analysis, Gagnon said. “The charge was kind of given to the planning board,” she said and then the analysis and recommendation. There will likely be potential regulatory policies and clear guidance to the next step.
Peacock added that she was looking to understand the pathway out of the moratorium.
Smith said, “The goal of staff at this point is to have sufficient and accurate data by which we can apply perhaps a statistical analysis to that data to understand what is actually happening with certain types of development in the community and allow that data to inform the council and the public as to possible policy solutions that can address what the data says is happening. What we know we can do, we believe we can have all that data and analysis work done.”
Then they can have possible policy solutions based on the analysis work.
“We still have a lot of work to do, we all know that,” Smith said.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
TOWN COUNCIL MEETING
PARK ENTRANCE HOTEL
Application (amended 6.24.2025)
Completeness Review Public Notice (posted 6.23.2025)
MORATORIUM AND WORKSHOP LINKS
Data collection overview and roadmap (uploaded 02.18.2025)
Updated Moratorium Timeline (uploaded 05.01.2025)
Workshop #2 (March 27, 2025) Meeting recording (uploaded 04.09.2025)
MDI Historical Society presentation starts at: 04:50
Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce presentation starts at: 31:17
Workshop #2: Staff Discussion Guidance Slides (uploaded 03.27.2025)
Workshop #2: MDI Historical Society Presentation (uploaded 03.28.2025)
Workshop #2: Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Presentation (Trends in Tourism Economy) (uploaded 03.27.2025)
Maine Office of Tourism 2023 Economic Impact & Visitor Tracking Report (uploaded 03.28.2025)
Maine Office of Tourism Downeast & Acadia 2023 Economic Impact & Visitor Tracking Report (uploaded 03.28.2025)
Workshop #3: Staff Discussion Slides (uploaded 05.01.2025)
Public Safety: Calls for Service Graph from 2018-2024 (uploaded 05.01.2025)
Applications Due July 18 for Warrant Committee Vacancy
The Warrant Committee will appoint a new member to temporarily fill a vacancy created by a recent resignation from the committee. Under the Town Charter, the committee appoints a qualified resident to serve until a new member is elected next June.
Anyone interested in serving should complete an Application to Serve on Boards and Committees, and write in “Warrant Committee.” Applications are due to the Town Clerk’s office 5 p.m. Friday, July 18. Per the Warrant Committee's bylaws, a nominating committee will review the applications and make a recommendation to the full committee for the appointment.
Contact 288-4098 with any questions.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Fine Violins by David.
Follow us on Facebook. And as a reminder, you can easily view all our past stories and press releases here.
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here (about how you can give) or here (a direct link), which is the same as the button below.
If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.