Like many in Bar Harbor, David Bowden has a few places tourists can rent come summertime; along with being a city councilor, he’s also the owner of Edgewater Motel and Cottages. Bowden decries the ghost-town atmosphere that descends upon Bar Harbor each November.
“Neighborhoods are going dark in the winter,” he said.
Bar Harbor residents have long wrestled with the double-edged sword that is the tourist industry. Tourist trade allows residents to make their living in just a few months, but also leaves the town empty in the off-season. Bowden says townspeople struggle to maintain a viable year-round community.
Recently, Bar Harbor has experienced a boom in new home construction. The majority of the new projects are subdivisions of condominiums. Many are purchased by absentee buyers who use the condos as an investment, renting them weekly in the summer and selling them if and when property values rise.
“We all know the condo era is coming to Bar Harbor,” Bowden said. “It’s a concern for a lot of small businesses.”
In Bar Harbor, weekly rentals compete in an already-saturated tourist accommodation industry. Unlike hotels and bed and breakfasts, however, weekly rentals are currently unregulated and unzoned. Bowden says more than 250 weekly rentals currently operate in the Bar Harbor area.
For Bowden, the emergence of weekly rentals has changed the way he’s done business. In the past, he was able to rent his cottages strictly by the week. They were always booked well into the fall.
“That doesn’t happen anymore,” he said.
To compete with weekly rentals, he’s taken to renting cottages for shorter stays.
Bar Harbor planning director Anne Krieg says the debate about weekly rentals is nothing new.
“Weekly rentals have been a topic of discussion since — well, my files go back to 1989,” Krieg said.
But the recent boom in new home construction has brought matters to a head. In 2004, 50 new residential units were constructed in the Bar Harbor area. In 2005, that number rose to 71. Krieg reports that recently, every new subdivision plan has been a source of controversy.
Current Bar Harbor land use ordinances favor clustered family living projects like condominiums. Construction projects greenlighted by the town have “met the technical requirements of the Bar Harbor Land Use Ordinance, but have met with an outcry of public concern,” Krieg wrote in an August memorandum to the town council.
The construction rush comes at a time when the town government has been struggling to revise what is largely viewed as an antiquated comprehensive plan.
“The 1993 [plan] is past its life, not just in years, but in the attitudes of the Board and the public,” Krieg advised councilors.
The council voted recently to impose a moratorium on most new residential construction from Sept. 6, 2005 until March 5, 2006. The moratorium’s purpose is to allow city government to update land-use ordinances and decide on a weekly rental policy.
After a series of joint workshops in the late fall, the city council and planning board recom mended a series of new restrictions on weekly rentals. The proposed changes would restrict weekly rentals most for those not living in Bar Harbor year-round. Those who qualify for Maine’s homestead exemption (living in Bar Harbor for six months or more) may have a weekly rental anywhere in the area for up to 30 days and need only register once with the town.
Those who do not qualify would only be allowed to rent in certain commercial districts heavily dominated by hotels and businesses. They would also need regular safety inspections and to apply for a license every year. Recent construction developments could be grandfathered in under the existing regulations.
The recommended changes will be voted on at a special town meeting later this year. The vote is expected to be close.
Councilor Bowden joked that the weekly rental debate reflects a longstanding tradition in Bar Harbor, where newcomers to the town often want to blow up the bridge behind them.
Ironically, many in the town’s government are relative newcomers. Bowden noted that one problem the city government has in rewriting the Comprehensive Plan is that few were around when the plan was originally written in 1993.