Planning Board Does Not Allow Application To Rebuild Park Entrance Motel to Move Forward
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Shops.
BAR HARBOR—The Bar Harbor Planning Board did not allow the rebuild of a hotel in Hulls Cove to move forward this week due to a moratorium on lodging in the town.
The night before the planning board’s Wednesday meeting, the town council had extended the moratorium for another 180 days and tweaked its language to include all planning board processes and approvals, not just the code enforcement processes. Different projects require different approval processes in the town.
That tweaked moratorium doesn’t go into effect for 30 days.
The planning board on Wednesday decided that even under the current moratorium, the project could not move forward. The goal for the applicants, Planning Board Chair Millard Dority said, was to convince the board how the project doesn’t fall under the auspices of the moratorium.
“We’ve been at this property since 2001, since we bought it,” property representative Eben Salvatore said.
The proposal is to redevelop the Park Entrance Motel site, decreasing the overall size and rebuilding its pier. The plans would make it into a four-story hotel on the eight acres. The original motel was built in 1967 and has 58 guest rooms.
Salvatore told the planning board that the company had followed the moratorium process and met with town staff multiple times.
“We thought it wasn’t targeted for the Hulls Cove area anyway,” Salvatore said of the moratorium, which discusses congestion and infrastructure load on town water and sewer infrastructure, “until last night.”
While the planning board agreed that the property would decrease nonconformities on the site, the plan could not proceed because of the moratorium.
Dority said there was no problem with the specific project. “It’s a vast improvement.”
However, he did feel like it falls under the moratorium.
Town attorney Stephen Wagner advised that there is a general prohibition on the pause on building and major renovations of lodging. That applies notwithstanding the specific language citing the code enforcement officer, he suggested.
“If what was just laid out was true,” Salvatore said, the modification to the moratorium made by the council the night before wouldn’t have been necessary.
“The difficult is obviously that the moratorium prohibits the consideration of applications and permitting,” Vice Chair Ruth Eveland said.
It’s not a minor modification, she added. Those are exempted from the moratorium.
“The building is on its last breath. It needs to go,” Salvatore said.
The board moved that the moratorium does apply to the planning board approvals and the board will not consider the project until the moratorium is over. The board unanimously agreed.
Salvatore said that they expect to modify the plan after talking to neighbors and are open to input from all.
“We really want to make this right, make this fit,” he said.
The project is on the ocean in Hulls Cove on a sloping lot.
“When the moratorium expires, we need to have material in,” so that it can hit the timeline for the application, Perry Moore of The Moore Companie, also representing the project said Wednesday.
The project’s 153-page development application was filed in June. It would demolish the current motel buildings. The new hotel would be 24 suites in mostly the same position on the property as the current motel. The marina would include offices and a shower, laundry, and shops. There would also be a restaurant in the hotel. The marina would have a bar.
Ocean Properties (OP) has refurbished multiple hotels in New England and runs the Harborside Hotel, Bar Harbor Regency, West Street Hotel, Bar Harbor Club, Samoset, and Wentworth by the Sea. The company’s subsidiaries are involved in lawsuits regarding the disembarkation of cruise ships in Bar Harbor. The Regency was also the site of a death of a long-time worker in a construction accident this winter.
PUBLIC COMMENT
During general public comment during the meeting, Dennis Bracale, a Hulls Cove landscape designer, said he was worried about changes to setbacks on the Blue Star Memorial Highway recommended by the board and approved by the voters.
A setback is the distance from a property line where structures can not be built. There are often different setback requirements in many different districts in a town.
At the June election, on the town ballot, voters approved decreasing the setback in the Salisbury Cove District along Route 3 to match the Ireson Hill District, also along Route 3.
Bracale worried about the change because he thinks that especially along a road like the Blue Star Memorial Highway that buffer was to keep the area preserved.
“We really are taking away something that is, in my opinion, which is the most important thing to preserve,” Bracale said. That includes the view sheds.
“It’s okay to have lofty goals, but developers will develop,” he said.
When he came to College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor in the 1980s, it was a rural road, he said.
According to a 2023 article by Richard F. Weingroff for the Federal Highway Administration, “The Blue Star Memorial Highways are a tribute to the armed forces that have defended the United States of America. The National Garden Clubs, Inc., is the parent organization for Blue Star Memorial Highways.
“The idea dates to 1944 when the New Jersey State Council of Garden Clubs beautified a 5½-mile stretch of U.S. 22 from Mountainside to North Plainfield. Approximately 8,000 dogwood trees were planted as a living memorial to the men and women in the Armed Forces from New Jersey. The Blue Star, taken from the blue star in the service flag, was chosen to symbolize the memorial because it was used during World War II on flags and homes of families that had a son or daughter in the service. The New Jersey Legislature approved a Joint Resolution on January 22, 1945, designating this highway ‘Blue Star Drive.’"
In Maine, the Garden Club Federation of Maine adopted the program in 1946 and designated U.S. Route 1 as the state’s first Blue Star Memorial Highway. Other junctions were added in 1957. In 1972, Route 2 and Route 3 were added.
EASTERN BAY ESTATES
The planning board also heard a sketch plan review from Eastern Bay Estates.
The Bar Harbor RV LLC, which runs the Bar Harbor Campground, hopes to better utilize the land they have according to consultant Steve Salisbury.
“All the lots are going to come directly off the Sand Point Road,” Salsbury said. Some will have a shared driveway.
The staff will schedule a site visit for the seven one-plus acre lots on a total of 7.5 acres located on 409 State Hwy 3 in Bar Harbor.
The subdivision would be located on the 88‐acre parcel and the remainder of the parcel is the Bar Harbor Campground.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Eastern Bay Estates
Sketch Plan Application (posted 6.23.2025)
Application (posted 6.23.2025)
Park Entrance Motel
Application (amended 6.24.2025)
Completeness Review Public Notice (posted 6.23.2025)
Unless otherwise specified, photos by Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story
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The Town Council, reacting to community angst, extended and broadened a ban on certain commercial development for another 180 days while town staff continues to gather certain “data”.
Meanwhile everyone agrees the former Park Entrance Motel, deteriorating and now dormant for two decades needs a come to Jesus moment with an excavator and a complete remake.
Indeed to not only improve our sadly deteriorating for-profit-tax base, but improve our precious view shed plainly articulated by Dennis Bracale in the second article about our front dooryard approach to downtown Bar Harbor covered so well by Carrie and Shaun.
One has to wonder why Mr. Bracale wasn’t at the forefront of an earlier debate about which corridor to run a much needed high voltage power line into Bar Harbor advocating for the less unsightly alternative?
Utilities, while much needed and appreciated, generally are considered less aesthetically pleasing than almost any development, especially in Bar Harbor where design, narrowly defined and allowed, is constantly scrutinized.
One has to wonder what our priorities are?