No new hotel for Bar Harbor! Yesterday the Bar Harbor Planning Board rejected a proposed hotel Tom Walsh and Ocean Properties, that was to be located on West Street.
The unanimous 4-0 vote by the board comes after a year of debate and was supposedly based on the fact that the $12 million project did not meet the land use ordinance.
According to the board, buildings of four stories, such as the proposed hotel, must include an amount of year-round dwellings equal to the size of the fourth floor. Mr. Walsh maintained that, according to the LUO, the number of year-round dwellings is calculated by another measure, and that he had met that measure with his plans.
Despite local support for the project, including West Street business owners who urged the board to approve the hotel, citing conformity with the LUO, benefits to the local economy and tax base, and the aesthetic improvements the project would bring to the area, no agreement could be found.
This stalemate comes after Ocean Properties scaled back the hotel from 5 to 4 stories and added more more parking spaces to address the planning board’s concerns in October 2009.
Posted by: Michael Sosnowski
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