Island divided | Trouble over a proposed hotel on Portland's Great Diamond Island prompts talk about what makes a neighborhood
A proposed condominium hotel on Portland’s Great Diamond Island has stirred up debate among islanders and mainlanders over whether seasonal, off-shore communities are neighborhoods requiring as much protection as their year-round counterparts.
The $6.5 million, 20-unit condo hotel at Great Diamond’s former Fort McKinley barracks proposed by developer David Bateman is slated to go before the city council Oct. 6 for final approval after councilors postponed a decision at their Sept. 3 meeting when a group of islanders known as The Friends of Great Diamond Island sued Bateman to stop the project. “This is a four-star luxury hotel, not one of those quaint island hotels you see on Chebeague or Monhegan” islands, explains Bill Robitzek, a lawyer at Berman Simmons in Portland and head of The Friends. “It’s intended to be chic, which is not what this island is about.”
But developer Bateman counters that the hotel could be a boon for Great Diamond by generating $60,000 a year in property tax revenue and consequently lowering islanders’ assessment fees, which have doubled in the past decade.
Maine’s islands can be some of the most rustic locales in the country, home to the last vestiges of a traditional coastal lifestyle. But since 1900, the number of Maine islands with year-round populations has dwindled from 300 to just 15, according to the Island Institute in Rockland, as more islands become seasonal destinations for vacationers and tourists. On Great Diamond, where under 100 residents live year-round, Bateman’s hotel could determine the trajectory of the island’s growth as either a vacation spot or a secluded neighborhood.
On August 26, The Friends of Great Diamond Island filed a lawsuit in Cumberland County Superior Court to invalidate a 2007 vote by island homeowners that gave Bateman permission to build the Inn at Diamond Cove. Though the city of Portland isn’t named in the lawsuit, the group claims the city illegally leveraged the 23 votes it’s given as the owner of the Fort McKinley property to swing the result in favor of the project. The Conservation Law Foundation, Maine Audubon, Friends of Casco Bay and the Island Institute joined the lawsuit, asking the city of Portland to preserve the land as open space.
“I think the real question is whether this is an appropriate use” of the property, says Kevin Donoghue, the Portland city councilor representing the islands and part of Portland’s mainland. “Some might argue that this isn’t like any other neighborhood.”
Of the three islands Donoghue represents, Great Diamond Island has the largest number of seasonal residents, and putting a hotel on the island would continue that trend. “Implicit in our decision,” Donoghue says, “is whether Great Diamond Island is a resort community or a neighborhood of Portland.”
My island, my hideout
Michael Hillard, an economics professor at the University of Southern Maine and a Portland resident, says interest in waterfront homes and second homes has increased in the past 20 years, leading to the development of some of Maine’s most remote areas, including lakes in the northern woods. A hotel like the one Bateman proposes for Great Diamond Island would provide “a little bit of injection into the local economy,” but on a small scale, he says. “This isn’t the same thing as a cruise ship.”
The proposed hotel would operate seasonally from Memorial Day to Columbus Day and would be managed by Hart Hotels of Buffalo, N.Y., which also manages another of Bateman’s properties, the Portland Harbor Hotel in Portland’s Old Port. A majority of the condo units, priced in the $300,000-$600,000 range, will be owned by the hotel’s partners, with only a “handful” left for public purchase, Bateman says. If the hotel is successful, Bateman plans to renovate the fort’s former hospital into an additional 12 units.
Bateman cites numerous economic benefits for the island and the mainland. The condo hotel would boost the city’s tax revenues, rehabilitate a pair of historic buildings, and provide business for the Casco Bay Lines ferry to the island and the Diamond’s Edge Restaurant and Marina. And bringing more transient visitors to Great Diamond would, he says, “provide a wider base for re-sales to people who already own property out there, and with that change come price increases.”
Controversy over island development is not new. Residents of Islesboro off the coast of Northport, an island that is already a vacation spot for Hollywood celebrities and millionaires, battled over a 20-lot subdivision proposed in 2005, leading the town in 2006 to establish a three-year cap limiting the amount of new construction. And Edgecomb residents are currently fighting for a moratorium to curb development on the town’s Davis Island after the Sheepscot Harbour Village & Resort expanded there.
Great Diamond Island has also seen its share of past debate, and with some of the same players — Bateman in the 1980s proposed developing the former Army base properties into 134 condo units, which raised objections from conservation groups. But the city and state approved the project, and 77 condos have been built so far in a handful of renovated buildings now called Diamond Cove.
The Friends’ Robitzek and other residents have opposed Bateman’s latest project since it was approved by voters last year, but decided to file the lawsuit last month after the city’s planning board, in one of the last stages before final city approval of the project, voted to recommend changing the zoning to allow the hotel. “We were really hoping the administrative process would be sufficient, and we wouldn’t have to bring a lawsuit,” Robitzek says.
The suit asks the court to declare the homeowners association vote invalid. The lawsuit also argues that the development is “inconsistent” with permitting restrictions placed on the property by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the homeowners association, which designated the buildings for use as single family residences and open space.
The development has sparked tensions between islanders who have owned cottages on the island for over a hundred years and property owners who rent their homes out for profit. “That’s the dichotomy at work,” says Robitzek. “Is this part supposed to be for investment or for homes?”
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