SPECIAL REPORT: Architecture plans envision new Bar Harbor hotel
BAR HARBOR, Oct. 18, 2024 - Will the owner of a tight parcel with only .4 of an acre abutting Conners Emerson School on one of the island’s busiest arteries, Rt. 3, with a extremely steep driveway, be allowed to build a three-story hotel towering over the village and the school?
The QSJ obtained architecture plans for such a bold concept yards away from the intersection of Eden Street (Rt. 3) and West Street by a developer seeking to build what appears to be a hotel with more than 20 guest rooms and a parking garage.
Town Council member Maya Caines, who heard about it, said she would be “very disappointed” if another hotel is erected during her term on the council. She is pressing Town Manager James Smith to make a much discussed moratorium on transient accommodations a priority item on the council agenda.
“No more hotels, no more campgrounds. We’re done,” Caines said.
The town’s assessor data base shows the property was acquired one year ago for $975,000 by Eden Street LLC from Ross LLC. In 1996, the heirs of Claudine Hauer sold it to Ross for $295,000. It’s assessed at $553,900.
Eden Street LLC listed its address as 38 Rodick Street, which is owned by the CPA firm of Coston and McIsaac. Paul Coston’s nephew, Stephen Coston, owns multiple hotels and inns in town. He recently donated $100,000 to the construction fund for a new school.
He and Tom St. Germain, his partner for the Pathmaker Hotel under construction on Cottage Street, spoke out against a transient lodging moratorium proposed by councilor Gary Friedmann at the Oct. 1 workshop of the Town Council to discuss the proposed comprehensive plan.
Thursday night, Friedmann told the League of Towns at its dinner meeting in Northeast Harbor he was pressing for a moratorium because the island had exceeded its “carrying capacity” for transient accommodations.
The agenda for the Oct. 30 meeting of the Planning Board does not include any new applications for transient accommodations, although assistant planner Cali Martinez said new applications may be added to an agenda three days before a meeting.
It is unclear whether Eden Street LLC will even seek Planning Board approval. The Cottage Street hotel was approved as a bed and breakfast which did not require Planning Board approval, but only approval by the Design Review Board.
There is precedence in the area for moratoriums.
More than 400 persons voted unanimously in Lamoine in a special town meeting in August 2023 to impose a moratorium on large-scale developments, stating they do not want hotels, motels, resorts and “glampgrounds.”
In May 2023, the group Growing Lamoine Responsibly, gathered more than the required 105 signatures to put this issue in front of the town.
It came after a proposed glampground of 90 dome-shaped lodging structures, to be fully equipped with amenities such as: running water, electricity, and air conditioning like those found in hotels. Restaurants, wedding rooms, spas, and pools were part of a development on a 240-acre piece of wetland property in the residential part of Lamoine.
The application for the development was made by an Arizona-based corporation, Clear Sky Resorts, which owns a similar glampground outside of Grand Canyon National Park in Williams, Arizona. It presented the proposal to create a similar resort called Clear Sky Acadia.
Enough already. We have too many transient accommodations as it is, and this area already has far too much traffic congestion. One has to wonder if the builder's $100,000 donation to Conners Emerson, while generous, had an entirely different motivation.
Will it have its own paid parking?