Bar Harbor businessman turns Tremont year-round homes into AirBNB units

OTHER NEWS: State still mum on Seawall repair; List of top 'payments-in-lieu-of-taxes' from non-profits; QSJ assailant apologizes

WEST TREMONT, July 14, 2024 - The four towns and the national park here are not hermetically sealed like the fictitious town Seahaven in the movie, “The Truman Show,” even though some local denizens behave like they are.

Our boundaries are porous, as well as our economies.

Newton’s third law of motion stated that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So a Bar Harbor action could have a reaction somewhere else. Vice versa.

Let’s take the example of Bar Harbor businessman Diwas Thapa’s management of 14 apartments in West Tremont.

Thapa is the owner of one of my favorite restaurants on the island, Royal Indian, which is a great relief from the pervasive lobster roll and fried clam joints. In 2023, he bought the popular breakfast place 2 Cats on Cottage Street. He also owns a laundromat in Bar Harbor and Everyday Joe’s on Main Street.

In addition, Thapa is an operator of AirBNB-enabled vacation rentals. He has permits for at least seven short-term vacation units in Bar Harbor. He also owns properties in Ellsworth.

According to public records, in November 2023 he purchased the 14 two-bedrooms apartments on Woodland Drive here which housed year-round workers for decades. He quickly imposed rent increases as high as 65 percent.

Three of the units became vacant, and Thapa turned two of them into Airbnb rentals, which are not regulated in Tremont. An attempt to register short-term vacation rentals failed at the ballot box by two votes in May.

One tenant sent me a photo and stated, “I used to have neighbors, now I have a Tesla.”

Here is a snapshot of one of the apartments for rent on AirBNB:

AirDNA, the marketing firm for potential rental property buyers, estimated that Thapa could net $52,500 a year from this unit. His yearly rent from his current tenants are about $18,000 a year before taxes and expenses.

So it’s a “no brainer.”

Thapa was making a rational economic decision.

But Thapa’s gain could be the Quietside’s loss.

What happens if all working tenants in the remaining units are priced out, like the local fisherman and his wife who moved to Orland? Most of the units are occupied by year-round workers, including families with school-age children.

Another tenant who works in the Village of Southwest Harbor is worried that at the end of a one-year lease, the new rent will be prohibitive.

So in short order, Quietside employers could be out of 10, 15, 20 workers? The bike shop, the restaurants, the curio shops?

If the Airbnb units do not pan out for Thapa, he can always convert the apartments to house his employees who could pay as much as current tenants.

The housing crisis is now a full-blown worker crises.

Who wins in the battle for workers?

Those with scale, and housing, the new coin of the realm for businesses on MDI.

Rents for workers may be discounted, but they are not necessarily cheap. Workers at a hardware store on the Quietside pay $1,700 for a two-bedroom unit to be able to work at the store below.

Some business owners, like Bar Harbor hotelier Stephen Coston, say they provide free housing for their workers. But they are the exceptions.

“Scale” is what economists call the efficiency of size, like how Walmart and Amazon turned many downtowns into ghost towns. Bangor and Lewiston come to mind.

Who are some MDI operators with scale?

Ocean Properties, Witham Family hotels, Michael Boland’s restaurants, Tim Harrington’s inns and cottages, Jackson Labs, the National Park Service and Diwas Thapa, among others. (David Witham is building an 84-bed dormitory in Bar Harbor to house his staff.)

At the June 12 meeting of the Mount Desert Planning Board, which approved the massive expansion of the Asticou Inn, no board member asked about the 100-plus workers needed and where they would be housed. Only a resident dialing into the meeting on Zoom asked that question. The engineer for the project said housing will be “all over the island.”

Jackson Labs has an application in front of the Bar Harbor Planning Board for a $33 million addition. Will any member of the BH Planning Board ask how JAX plans to accommodate the 95 new employees needed to operate the new facility?

These are “planning” boards after all and not just permit-approval boards.

Already, JAX professors have complained they cannot hire enough workers for their projects and labs because of the high cost of housing, despite JAX’s efforts to build more staff housing.

These are highly educated and professional people, some of whom make more than $100,000 a year. Even at that, there is not enough inventory to satisfy the demand.

The losers will be the small businesses without scale, the sole operators without a cushion.

Peekytoe Provisions comes to mind. This Bar Harbor seafood market/restaurant is undergoing a total rebuild of its business on Main Street in Bar Harbor. In the interim its has temporarily parked in Southwest Harbor, first sharing space at Rogue Cafe and now in its own building in the former Coda Cafe behind the library.

Turns out the SWH space is welcoming and the owners would like to see if they can maintain a presence on the Quietside even after their Bar Harbor remake is completed.

Biggest obstacle?

Lack of workers.

Peekytoe is the best seafood market to come to the Quietside since Pectic Seafood vacated its spot in Hall Quarry in 2008 and moved to Trenton just at the beginning of the Great Recession.

Peekytoe offers black cod from Alaska and the best crab cakes for a quick pan fry at home.

It would be lovely for me to drive 10 minutes to its SWH location next year instead of trekking into Bar Harbor’s mean streets and battle for parking against cars with license plates from New Jersey, Virginia and Florida.

Over time, we will have the same face as Naples, Florida and Vail, Colorado - places with cookie cutter establishments shorn of authenticity. Just walk down Cottage and West streets in Bar Harbor. They are already here.

One of Thapa’s current tenants, Rebecca Brugman, who rents a two-bedroom apartment which she shares with two children, stated on Facebook:

“The current housing situation concerns me on the human level as well as bringing anxieties to my household.

“This is a wide spread and blatant disregard for working people who rarely get a vacation and certainly not one at $300-$500 a night.

“The integrity of the community is spiraling into unchecked greed and unfamiliar neighbors as the Air BnB activity discards families in favor of tourists. I am not against wealth or vacations. I am against people intentionally creating and allowing this level of chaos to continue.”

Seawall or “Sealed Wall,” the saga continues

SOUTHWEST HARBOR - The deputy DOT commissioner promised a quick response when he appeared before 200 citizens June 27 demanding to know how the state would respond to their plea to repair Seawall Road, closed after several winter storms.

More than two weeks later, silence is the operating mode.

Three local contractors have stepped up to offer to repair the road, but they need rules of engagement on how to abide by environmental and state regulations to open a road “in a safe manner.”

Town Manager Marilyn Lowell, charged with shepherding the project as the local point person, said Friday she has not been able to get Dale Doughty, DOT deputy commissioner, to call her back to answer procedural questions.

“There is erosion control, silt socks so that nothing goes into the ocean pond,” Lowell said. “And then there's this other thing called a 100-foot permit by rule that that if there's only like 100 feet, you can fix it without getting a type of permit.”

Lowell said the select board “wanted me to clarify those things before we signed any kind of an agreement. For us to be the overseers we just want clarity what some of those things mean. He (Doughty) gave me only general information.”

The rain stopped exactly at 9:30 Saturday as the Flamingo Festival parade started in Southwest Harbor (see below)

Non-profits and their ‘payments-in-lieu-of-taxes’

BAR HARBOR - In the current fiscal year which just ended, Jackson Labs was the highest payer of revenue in lieu of taxes by a non-profit in Bar Harbor.

Acadia National Park was the largest payer in the four towns on MDI.

These are strictly voluntary payments, based on opaque formulas and preferences unknown to the public and local officials.

College of the Atlantic was once again the lowest, behind the housing authority and MDI Bio Labs. Moreover, COA maxes out the town’s short-term vacation rental ordinance to extract more revenues from the 17 properties it has acquired. Its students also have become the biggest bloc of customers at the Bar Harbor Food Pantry. The new president has a lot of work to do to correct the stench of exploitation she has inherited. More on that below.

For the fiscal year which just ended, the PILOT revenues were:

BAR HARBOR:

JAX, $119,254, ANP, $47,353, Housing Authority, $26,432, MDI Biolab, $10,000, COA, $8,500

MOUNT DESERT:

ANP, $31,000, Land and Garden Preserve, $21,000

SOUTHWEST HARBOR:

ANP, $15,231, MDI Housing Authority, $12,954, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, $1,797

TREMONT:

ANP, $21,169, Housing Authority, $6,427, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, $1,870

FOOTNOTE: Almost one third of the regular customers of the Bar Harbor Food Pantry here are students of the College of the Atlantic.

Tom Reeve, executive director, said the last time he took a hard count during the pandemic, 56 of the regular customers were COA students.

Since then, the demand has more than tripled. It reached a high point of 331 customers a few weeks ago, and the COA base has increased in step, he said.

Reeve said young working adults have made up the fastest growing segment of the demand for food. “A $30 savings off the grocery bill is a lot,” he said.

Apart from not taking care of its students’ food insecurity, COA is one of the largest landlords in Bar Harbor.

It has the single largest number of short-term vacation rental permits -17 - in the latest annual report by the code enforcement officer.

COA’s head of PR, Ron Levin, wrote in response to my question:

“The mission of College of the Atlantic is to provide an excellent education to hiour students. As part of that mission, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that our students have opportunities for housing during the academic year. With the changes to the housing market in recent years, opportunities for affordable rental housing in the area have dwindled. As a response to the changing market, COA has acquired a number of off-campus residences and built a new residence hall on campus over the past few years. With the purchases and construction, we are now able to offer housing to approximately 85% of our student body. We manage the bulk of our off-campus properties as vacation rentals during the time between the end of spring term and the beginning of fall term. The extra income derived from summer rentals allows us to keep the rental price at a reasonable level for students during the academic year.”

Levin did not respond to my email asking why COA students are the biggest bloc of customers at the local food bank. I did not ask nor did I expect to receive, just how many weeks COA rents out its STRs versus housing its students.

I am a generous contributor to COA, but I am also specific about how I want my contribution to be used by the college. For instance, I would not want any of my money to go to COA’s partnership with Ocean Properties, nor its support for cruise ship initiatives as it did in June 2019.

That was when COA executive Millard Dority, now the Planning Board chairman, used his COA email to urge the COA “community” to oppose a citizens effort to block cruise ships with more than 500 passengers from being allowed to tie up to town piers. That citizens initiative was approved by a vote of 493 to 384.

Cruise ships are one of the foulest polluters on the planet.

QSJ accepts apology in phone theft at Planning Board meeting

NORTHEAST HARBOR - At exactly 24 minutes and 38 seconds into the Planning Board meeting on Aug. 9, 2023, a man dressed in black came from behind me and wrestled my phone out of my hands and then ran out of the town office building into the night.

You may double click the above video and view the incident for yourself.

I did not know where my phone was for almost a half hour. I did not know if any of my private information was compromised. The police was called.

It was not an ordinary meeting. It was a historic meeting when the board was deliberating the fate of a proposal for six affordable houses in the village at the corner of Manchester and Neighborhood roads. The proposal was opposed by many of the town’s wealthiest summer residents who said the density of the project was illegal.

Seven residents sued the town to overturn the PB’s approval of the project but did not prevail in Superior Court when Judge Thomas McKeon ruled in favor of the town in June.

I was taking photos of the meeting with my iPhone, much to the consternation of most of the people in the room made up of opponents to the project. We engaged in plenty of verbal jousting.

But I didn’t expect one of them to assault me and steal my phone.

Grady Burns, attorney for the plaintiffs who sued the town, at the podium.

Last week, the assailant, Alain Creissen, identified in a police report filed by Officer Tim Bland, who has since retired and gone to work as a security officer for Leonard Leo (another story), apologized in writing, as was my condition for not taking the matter to a Grand Jury, which District Attorney Robert Granger was prepared to do.

My assailant on his Linkedin page

I had written about the terrible backlog in Granger’s office for serious crimes - domestic violence, burglaries, robberies. Granger was notable for how he dismissed out of hand the “disorderly conduct” charge against a young protester after police in Mount Desert and Bar Harbor were summoned by Leo because the young man called him a “fucking asshole” in public.

“Bring me some real crimes,” Granger essentially said, upholding the First Amendment right of the protester.

For their troubles, the police officers were forced to settle a wrongful arrest lawsuit brought by the young protester who received $62,500.

Even though Granger appeared willing to prosecute Creissen, the last thing I wanted was to clog his docket with a case about an errant, privileged Northeast Harbor summer person who overreached. Granger also said grand juries are unpredictable and the was no guarantee they would side with me.

So I insisted on a written apology in lieu of taking the matter to a Grand Jury. Last week, I got what I wanted.

“I want to apologize for what happened at the Planning Board meeting Aug. 9, 2023, in Mt. Desert,” Creissen stated in his apology. “In the course of my dispute with Mr. Millstein, I took his phone from him. This disrupted the meeting and I should not have done so.”

Copy of Cressen’s signed, written apology

An Anna Creissen is identified in county and town records as the owner of a house at 18 Joy Road, which is on the same street as the public library and the elementary school.

In September 2022, Anna Creissen’s name appeared on a petition along with 204 others, including Leonard Leo’s, to oppose the housing project.

Alain Creissen’s name was not on the petition.

On Linkedin, he is identified as founder and general manager of HTX Technologies, a “scientific instrumentation company with a primary focus on sample preparation technologies and applications to Mass Spectrometry and Molecular Imaging.

TRIBUTE: Leanna Haynie Greene

1940 - 2024

NORTHEAST HARBOR - Leanna Haynie Greene, 83, died July 5, 2024, in Holden, with her daughters by her side. Born on July 27, 1940, in Richmond, VA, she was the daughter of Allen Webster and Ann Lee (Morrison) Haynie.

Leanna grew up in Baltimore, MD, and attended The Bryn Mawr School for
12 years. She then received a BA in Economics from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA, and a Certificate of Business Administration from the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration. Subsequently, she worked as a mortgage analyst for the Rouse Company in Baltimore and Teachers Insurance and Annuity in New York City. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, she worked as a photographer and an antique dealer.

Leanna married Dr. Wayne Wibby of Bangor in 1966. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1989 she married Francis N. Greene, who died on May 28, 2015.

She is survived by her two daughters: Erika Wibby Mitchell and husband J. Aaron of Northeast Harbor, and Allison Covington Wibby and partner Jeff Alzner of Portland, Or; three grandchildren: Olive Morrison Mitchell, Geneva Merrifield Mitchell and Francis Rigby Mitchell.

Unbeknownst to many in town – and even her grandchildren – Leanna was the Cackling Halloween Witch, who threw candy to the Northeast Harbor School children as they paraded down Main Street.

A Celebration of Leanna’s life will be held at 1pm, Wed., August 21, 2024, at St. Mary’s By-The-Sea Episcopal Church, 20 South Shore Rd., Northeast Harbor. Private interment will be at Forest Hill Cemetery, Northeast Harbor.

Leanna’s family is forever indebted to Marlene Walker and Charlene Wallace at Total Care Solutions for the incredible care they provided during Leanna’s final months. Those who desire may make a contribution in Leanna’s memory to Total Care Solutions, 625 South Road, Holden, ME 04429.

Arrangements by Jordan-Fernald, 1139 Main St., Mt. Desert.

Condolences may be expressed at www.jordanfernald.com