A summer of our discontent - can MDI ever recover its social balance, common good ?

Other news: Why are wealthy summer folks trying to choke off housing? Park staff keep a wary eye on rising water temps

NORTHEAST HARBOR , July 23, 2023 - This post is a rare cruise ship-free zone. But do not fret, there are other markers of convulsive behavior:

The deep-pocketed denizens of Smallidge Point are funding the NIMBY fight against affordable housing in the village. About a five-iron-shot away, the standoff between protesters and Leonard Leo always seems to be just a tick away from a knife’s edge, although yesterday’s protest attended by about 50 persons did not induce any police action.

Welcome back, campers!

If this were Nantucket, the Times (NYT that is) would be all over these titillating tales of social intemperance and neighborhood rows of epic proportions. But few of the Times scribes vacay here. They frequent Martha’s Vineyard, Fire Island, Nantucket and Rehoboth Beach in Delaware (the D.C. bureau).

So with apologies to the New York Posts’s Page 6, here is my report on MDI’s transitory, seasonal indulgences where year after year as I cross the Trenton causeway, I wonder, “What have they wrought now?”

Does the sale of the Asticou represent a bigger shift in the societal politic here? Some localrati are casting a wary eye on what might happen to their prized cynosure.

In 1964, both the Asticou-Inn and Kimball House, also in Northeast Harbor, were sold to the Asti-Kim Corporation. This group was composed of local business people and summer residents who wished to see the tradition of the large hotels preserved.

But the pandemic took its toll.

Asti-Kim was able to secure two rounds of funding from Paycheck Protection totaling $685,914. In its latest annual public filing, it reported revenues of $2,065,805 and a staff of 73.

On June 7, the QSJ reported that hotelier Tim Harrington was negotiating to buy the Asticou to complete the takeover of the island’s two historic inns. That deal was closed on July 12, according to the Hancock County Registry of Deeds. The price was $7.75 million, according to Mainebiz.

Harrington’s remaking of the historic Claremont Hotel in Southwest Harbor in 2021 has won him fans and detractors. I swing both ways on this question.

The remodeling of the Claremont in the winter of 2021 was a truly herculean effort, in that it took him less than a year at the height of the pandemic. The end product was spectacular. I chatted with him on opening night and marveled at how he was able to remove the stanchions in the middle of the dining room to create one of the most spectacular spaces in Maine, if not the world - a panorama of Somes Sound from every table.

His creation of “Harry’s Bar,” a nod to the famous bar in Venice, was a nice touch.

The building and its interior were transcendent even though locals - like me - could no longer reserve a room for under $100. (In 1984 it was $35 for a queen with a water view.)

Where Harrington lost me was the faux replicate of a Miami Beach Marriott with its poolside cabanas for which there is the opportunity for a $200 upcharge.

Harrington ended the 100-year tradition at the Claremont and its legendary croquet tournaments on two courts which were displacing by a pool and the cabanas you may rent by the day.

Harrington also owns the former Colony Cottages in Hulls Cove. The property is now called Salt Cottages.

“I have long understood the power and draw of this small but impactful region of the world,” Harrington told Mainebiz. “For more than a century, this iconic inn has welcomed guests to the foothills of Acadia … We’ll thoughtfully restore the property for today’s travelers while maintaining the integrity of its formidable presence along Northeast Harbor.” (The key words were “today’s travelers” - the glitterati very much unlike the understated Blue Blood cohort.)

The Asticou will remain open for the 2023 season before undergoing a restoration led by Harringon’s team. 

I am looking forward to Harrington’s remake of the Asticou which needs a major face lift. I am not looking forward to the cabanas which will spoil the view for mariners, as the Asticou is the major reference point for entry into the harbor on the water.

Smallidge Point money behind fight against affordable housing

The battle over six units of “affordable housing” in the village is playing out exactly as I predicted a year ago that it would eclipse the eight-year battle in Hall Quarry as the most contentious zoning fight in town simply because of the location.

(Hall Quarry is a subdivision of residents who felt misled that they were told the screeching loud quarry business was permanently dormant.)

The biggest differentiators are the the moneyed people from Smallidge Point Road, a private reserve whose entrance is about 100 yards from the proposed project to build at the corner of Manchester and Neighborhood roads. Four persons have hired a lawyer to fight the application.

They are:

Lynne Wheat, Joseph Ryerson, Stuart Janney, Lamont Harris

I played golf with Lynne Wheat in 2021 when we were paired in a “scramble.” She was a good golfer. She told me she was a companion friend of Thomas Petterffy, the 57th richest man in the world with a net worth of $25.3 billion, with homes in Greenwich, CT., and Palm Beach, in addition to her home here.

Later that summer, at a fundraiser for MDI Hospital, Lynne Wheat and I exchanged a few friendly words until she was pulled aside by a friend and told that I wrote the Quietside Journal. She was horrified.

“You are a journalist?” she said as if that was a disease. We never spoke again.

I, and others, would be interested to know how the project to build six affordable housing units 200 yards away would affect her quality of life.

Her house at 5 Smallidge Point Road is in the assessor date base as being co-owned by Allen D. Wheat, the former CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston.

At 37 Smallidge Point is a house owned by Stuart Janney III, another named signatory opposing the project. Janney was owner of the horse Orb, which won the Kentucky Derby in 2013.

Lamont Harris is listed as a resident of 41 Smallidge Point. In 2010, he was referred to in a lawsuit involving an explosion in a house where he was living in Northeast Harbor.

Why these three felt threatened by a housing project which poses no direct impact other than that they might have to drive past it on their way to the golf or swim clubs is a good question. The fourth complainant, Joseph Ryerson, is at least a direct abutter.

Northeast Harbor has been the stage for many internecine contretemps over the decades among the 0.5 percenters. The housing project is being largely funded by billionaire Mitchell Rales, who has had his own share of local entanglements, some of it self-inflicted.

In 2015 he sued the scions of former Harvard President Charles W. Eliot. Along with the Rockefellers, they are considered royalty on the island. Rales did not like how the young Eliots partied on his private beach and dock.

Mitchell’s Rales’s mansion, top left, includes ownership of the wharf and beach below. His suit was settled in 2016. Bangor Daily News photo

In 2011, Rales, who built a 17,000 square-foot, $24 million seasonal mansion on 4.4 waterfront acres, was told that a 20x10-foot shed on his front yard had not been approved by the planning board.

Rales, whose net worth of $5.4 billion was recently reported by Forbes, gifted the shed the Harbor House community center.

His singular desire to restore some of the year-round housing in the village has plenty of supporters, including a petition signed by three of the select board and the town manager,

At a public hearing June 14, select board member Martha Dudman, former school board member Gail Marshall and former school board chair Caroline Pryor - all year-round residents - spoke passionately about the housing crisis and asked their seasonal neighbors to suspend their opposition in the “holistic” interest of the community.

Pryor said, “It's not okay to just have affordable housing up in the wetlands at the height of the island. That's not the only place we need to solve for. It needs to be in Seal Harbor. It needs to be in Bar Harbor. It needs to be in Northeast Harbor.

“That's what infill development is.

“We support the maximum that can be developed on this property. And the reason is because we have a crisis. In the short few years since I have rotated on our school board, we have lost 60 children from our school.

“We have teachers who commute insane travel distances to teach you. And I would like to say to the neighbors who oppose this: If you're thinking about appealing, please don't do this to our community. We need this. We don't need any more delays.

“This project doesn't need any more expense because ultimately it just makes the homes less and less affordable.”

The proposal will be reviewed at the Planning Board meeting Aug. 9. The short-handed board has four members, with three vacancies, including two alternate seats.

If appealed, the matter will go directly to Superior Court, skipping another short-handed appeals board, because matters involving subdivisions may be appealed directly, said Andy Hamilton of Eaton Peabody who is representing the town.

Mount Desert 365, the non-profit behind the six units, owns three other, larger parcels on Neighborhood Road with one abutting the school.

Those on Smallidge Point may sleep soundly either way.

MDI lakes, ponds fill up; rising water temperature a concern

SOMESVILLE - Billy Helprin had a spring like no other.

The director of the Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary is also the dam master on Long Pond where he struggled mightily to regulate the enormous flow from the monsoon-like rains in June.

The National Inventory of Dams rated the Long Pond dam as in “poor” condition with a significant “Hazard Potential Classification.” The dam was last inspected six years ago.

Helprin said he was less concerned about the dam than the rising water temperature which in some parts of the lake has already hit the low 80s.

“Warm water holds less dissolved oxygen than cold water, which can be a problem for fish and other aquatic organisms if oxygen concentrations fall below 5 ppm (parts per million),” stated Bill Gawley, staff biologist at Acadia National Park, through the park’s public affairs director.

“These lower oxygen concentrations can normally occur in some portions of Maine/MDI lakes, especially near the lake bottom where oxygen is used in natural decomposition processes in the lake sediments and it can’t be replenished by infusion from the atmosphere or aquatic plant and phytoplankton photosynthesis.”

'“Under these ‘normal’ conditions, organisms can simply stay away from the oxygen-poor sections.  When there is excessive warming of the lake water, greater portions of the water column can have low dissolved oxygen concentrations and suitable habitat is diminished or eliminated.

“Low dissolved oxygen concentrations near the lake bottom can also facilitate the release of phosphorus from the bottom sediment into the water column where it acts as a nutrient (fertilizer) for algae and other aquatic vegetation. When these algae die, they settle to the bottom of the lake and their decomposition can lead to further oxygen depletion.

“The current NPS (National Park Service) water quality program regularly monitors 17 lakes from April through October each year, in addition to the high-resolution monitoring buoy in Jordan Pond that records a suite of water quality measurements every 15 minutes.

“To date, we have seen warming to a similar degree of that occurring in other Maine lakes but little degradation of other related water quality conditions.

“We are well aware that MDI lakes could be on the cusp of experiencing conditions that could cause serious and irreversible change in water quality and lake ecosystem processes. Our protection and mitigation strategies include continuing and enhancing our water monitoring activities that enable us to assess current conditions and detect even small changes, and to work closely with state, federal, local, and academic organizations that share our goal in understanding and protecting Maine water quality.”

Helprin had a bit of good news.

The high water flow enabled alewives to migrate freely from Somes Sound, up the fish ladder at Mill Pond next to the library, swim upstream to spawn in Long Pond and then return to the ocean unencumbered.

During a draught three years ago, Helprin and volunteers had to rescue fish trapped in pools which resulted from the low flow of water.

Alewives are a foundational feed fish. There is a four-year gestation period for fish to reach maturity when they return to spawn in fresh water. That explained this year’s total count of only 12,000 at Mill Pond. In 2021, 54,000 alewives were counted, Helprin said.

So expect 2025 to see a robust return and hope for a good flow.