Acadia, MDI towns push joint plan for affordable housing on 55-acre parcel

Courtesy / National Park Service Acadia National Park is proposing a joint initiative to develop a 55-acre parcel for affordable year-round and seasonal housing for residents.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Three of Mount Desert Island’s four towns have so far endorsed a proposal by Acadia National Park to build workforce housing on a 55-acre parcel it owns in Town Hill, a village on the outskirts of Bar Harbor.

The proposal is for Acadia and Island Housing Trust to work with the island towns to develop affordable year-round and seasonal housing for residents. The service would retain 10 to 15 acres to build housing for its seasonal employees; the remaining land would be given to the trust to build workforce housing, according to a memo reviewed by the Bar Harbor Town Council at its meeting last week.

The towns of Tremont, Bar Harbor and Southwest Harbor have endorsed the concept. Acadia’s superintendent, Kevin Schneider, told the council the town of Mount Desert will be contacted about the proposal in early October.

Rockefeller donation

The National Park Service acquired the undeveloped parcel as a donation from John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1960, as an addition to Acadia. The business magnate and philanthropist had a summer home on the island and was responsible for developing Acadia’s 57-mile system of carriage roads.

In 1986, federal legislation that established a permanent boundary for the park also directed the National Park Service to convey the Town Hill parcel, without monetary consideration, to the town of Bar Harbor so that any town on the island could develop it as a centralized solid waste transfer station.

The need for a centralized transfer station for Mount Desert Island has since diminished and the parcel was never developed.

At the same time, the need for affordable workforce housing has become a universal concern for the towns. And Acadia is facing a growing need for permanent and seasonal employee housing.

Typically, Acadia hires about 150 seasonal employees for maintenance, interpretation, law enforcement, emergency medical services, fee collection, campground, and resource management operations of the park, according to the memo.

“For many for these functions, having the employees live locally and be readily accessible to the park is critical,” the memo says.

Island Housing Trust was founded in 1989 as a nonprofit organization to promote viable, year-round island communities by advancing permanent workforce housing on the island.

Next steps

The 1986 boundary legislation would need to be amended through an act of Congress to allow the change of use.

As an initial step, the National Park Service would obtain a legal property description and site inventory of the parcel that would serve as a basis for preparing a preliminary site development plan.

There are also right-of-way issues to be worked out.

The goal now, said Schneider, is to get a broad endorsement from the four towns on the concept, which can be taken to Maine’s Congressional delegation to demonstrate consensus.

Acadia and the towns began conversations on the concept in January 2020. Talks slowed after that but picked up again in recent months, he said.

The Bar Harbor council unanimously endorsed the concept.

Housing crunch

According to Island Housing Trust’s 2018 housing needs analysis and assessment for Mount Desert Island, home affordability is a challenge. Median incomes ranged at that time from $46,000 in Tremont to $70,000 in Mount Desert. But the income needed to afford a median price home ranged from $70,000 in Tremont to nearly $100,000 in Mount Desert. Over 78% of the island’s households were unable to afford the median home in their towns.

Since 2000, the median home values for the island’s towns more than doubled, while incomes rose between 31% and 65%, depending n the town.

The year-round housing stock is shrinking while the number of seasonal housing units is growing. And a rise in short-term vacation rentals continues to constrict the supply of year-round rental housing.

Housing affordability challenges make it difficult for employers to attract and retain workers, the analysis noted.

The trust has another Town Hill proposal in the pipeline for a cluster development of 10 affordable housing units on a 30-acre lot.