More luxury housing coming to Bar Harbor amid affordability shortage
A new household community is being crafted in Bar Harbor in a person of the past remaining undeveloped sections of the picturesque downtown village. But it is not affordable housing.
Alternatively, Hamilton Hill has been subdivided into 30 tons extremely noticeable from downtown and produced for superior-conclusion and luxurious properties, with tons valued about $500,000 on regular and residences valued from $750,000 to more than $2 million.
The new hilltop development is staying created as city officials and area companies grapple with a severe shortage in very affordable and workforce housing, which extra and extra men and women agree is poorly essential in the coastal city where millions of travellers present up each summertime and employers wrestle to obtain areas for their personnel to stay.
In a individual enhancement, a proposed new employee dormitory would be designed by Witham Family Resorts on a web site in the shadow of Hamilton Hill at the intersection of Kebo and Mount Desert streets. It’s the initial since voters agreed in 2020 to let this kind of development in town.
Somewhere else in city, Bar Harbor is seeking to collaborate with Acadia Nationwide Park to produce workforce housing on a 50-acre parcel on Crooked Road, and Island Housing Believe in is making 10 housing models that would be reserved for folks who live and work 12 months-round on Mount Desert Island. But these depict only a fraction of the 616 new rental and proprietor-occupied housing units that will be desired in Bar Harbor by 2033 because of to demand from customers, according to a latest housing analysis commissioned by the town.
Chris Swan, a single of the developers of Hamilton Hill, agrees that Bar Harbor is in dire have to have of cost-effective and employee housing, but said it was not high on the town’s radar when he and his lover, Scott Henngeler, set out 10 yrs back to construct house lots on the hill.
They paid $1.4 million for 35 acres on the south side of the hill in 2013 and predicted it would choose them a few several years to get a complete return on their investment decision, Swan explained.
“We had a 5-yr prepare to provide all those heaps and they sold in 18 months,” Swan explained. “There are so many purchasers who want to have Bar Harbor house. The desire has been nuts.”
Just after the fast turnaround on the 14 plenty they place in on Kebo Ridge Highway, Swan and Henngeler sought to purchase the extra 35 acres on the hill’s upper 50 {30865861d187b3c2e200beb8a3ec9b8456840e314f1db0709bac7c430cb25d05}. The major of Hamilton Hill is where by a late 1800s mansion identified as Thirlstane burned down in the massive wildfire of 1947. A mansion constructed in 1984 by the Juliano relatives, who previously owned the land, nevertheless stands there.
Swan and Henggeler purchased the upper 35 acres on Hamilton Hill, such as the Juliano mansion, in 2018 for $3.55 million, bringing the overall obtain volume for all 70 acres to $5 million. They subdivided 16 supplemental residence heaps out of the higher parcel, which include two that are accessed from Eagle Lake Highway. Most of the 30 complete lots are around one or two acres.
“That’s in which all the drinking water sights are,” Swan said of the hilltop tons that seem out more than the downtown village and Frenchman Bay. “They are not constructing any far more hills in Bar Harbor.”
Swan said that ahead of he and Henggeler purchased any land on Hamilton Hill, the total assessed worth of all 70 acres was about $2 million. Right after paying yet another few million pounds on subdividing the land, making private roads and putting in utilities, much more than 20 of the 30 total heaps have been offered, creating a lot more than $12 million in gross sales.
Now, with residences designed or underneath building on 16 of the a lot, he approximated that the over-all progress is at this time worthy of approximately $30 million.
“We didn’t anticipate that at all,” he stated of how quickly the worth of the property tons have soared. “It was a feeding frenzy.”
Swan extra that most of the heaps have been marketed to people who now lived in Bar Harbor, which he said was “surprising.” He also reported none of the houses on the hill can be rented out by the week for the reason that he and Henngeler place covenants on all the deeds that established a least rental time period of one particular month.
Michele Gagnon, the town’s scheduling director, stated the housing crunch in Bar Harbor has afflicted not just regional staff, but has also minimal possibilities for purchasers who have a whole lot of dollars.
As a final result, some buyers have paid far more than the asking price tag for some residences, only to tear them down and change them with fancier homes, she said — which lessens the amount of households that may well be additional affordable to persons with decreased incomes.
The building so far of additional than 20 new homes on Hamilton Hill could assist ease the stress on all stages of the nearby housing marketplace, she claimed, by building more homes obtainable to large-stop purchasers who in any other case may well “buy down” in the industry by buying a household that might be within reach for a reduce-money consumer.
The tax income produced by the new pricey homes will support the town spend for capital advancement tasks, together with a new K-8 school that could cost as significantly as $70 million, she explained.
Gagnon mentioned that even with the advancement on Hamilton Hill, dormitory-style housing for area staff, and new limitations on weekly holiday rentals, extra wants to be completed to reduce Bar Harbor’s housing crunch. Some parts of Bar Harbor have a minimum amount dimensions of 5 acres for a single-residence large amount, but housing builders need incentives to establish more than enough models on a supplied parcel of land to make them cost-effective.
“You’re having up land [with those restrictions],” Gagnon said. “In Bar Harbor, if you get four a lot in a subdivision, you are blessed. I consider the zoning ordinance is a massive section of the problem”
