Jackson Lab looks to streamline its Bar Harbor campus with proposed zoning change

Courtesy / The Jackson Laboratory The Jackson Laboratory is proposing to rezone Village Residential properties to be consistent with the Scientific Research District.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Jackson Laboratory, whose footprint in Bar Harbor and in other locations has grown sixfold since the 1980s and now totals nearly 2 million square feet worldwide, is looking to streamline its home-town campus.

Representatives for the biomedical research institute went before the Bar Harbor Planning Board and the Town Council in recent weeks to present a proposal to rezone parts of the campus currently in the Village Residential District.

The bulk of the campus falls in what's known as the Scientific Research for Eleemosynary Purposes District. ("Eleemosynary" refers to the charitable nature of the research.) The district covers most of the lab’s campus and allows for research and research production, along with residential uses for personnel, such as employees, student and visiting scientists.

The lab, located on Route 3 on the outskirts of Bar Harbor’s downtown and adjacent to Acadia National Park, is proposing that the district boundaries be expanded to include parcels currently zoned as Village Residential.

The Village Residential District parcels encompass five acres plus another two off nearby Schooner Head Road.

At the Planning Board meeting, Michael McKernan and John Fitzpatrick — the lab’s director of government and community relations and senior director of facilities, respectively — said the proposal had several goals.

Short-term housing

One was to unify the lab’s property into a continuous zone for scientific research. Bringing in the Village Residential parcels, McKernan said, would allow the lab to develop more densely on its core campus rather than sprawl outward.

The proposal would also allow the lab to use existing residential buildings with greater flexibility, as allowed by the Scientific Research District, he said.

Currently, he said, the Village Residential District imposes a 30-day minimum stay in residential units. But the lab often has students and visiting scientists who need housing for less than 30 days. Guests are typically in town from seven to 14 days.

The lab intends to mix and match the use of the housing for year-round workforce and for course and conference attendees, who have a hard time finding accommodations on the island, McKernan added.

Eliminate sprawl

“We want to eliminate sprawl,” said Fitzpatrick. “JAX will continue to grow in Bar Harbor and we want to grow on the core campus where we have utilities and infrastructure and not have to march down Schooner Head Road or into the triangle.”

“The triangle” refers to one of the Village Residential areas.

Fitzpatrick said that piecemeal zoning between several properties would force JAX to develop outside the core property if it exceeded lot coverage of 50%.

He said the proposal supports employee recruiting and retention by allowing shorter- and longer-term housing.

The rezoning would increase the front setback from 20 feet to 100 feet. McKernan said the increased setback suits the lab’s plan to eventually raze certain properties as they hit the end of their useful life and return the parcels back to their natural state.

John Kelly, Acadia National Park’s management assistant, spoke in favor of the change. Kelly said concentrated development is preferable to sprawl. He added that the 100-foot setbacks that were part of the JAX proposal would be an improvement to the scenic Acadia All-America Road, which traverses Route 3.

The council agreed to send the proposed change to a public hearing on Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. The council would then consider whether to sign an order to place the proposal on the warrant for the June 14 town meeting.

Fitzpatrick spoke to the lab’s expansion over the years. When he started as an employee there, in the mid-1980s, JAX occupied 300,000 square feet in Bar Harbor and had slightly more than 400 employees.

Today, the lab has 820,000 square feet in Bar Harbor, 310,000 square feet in Ellsworth after full build-out, 225,000 square feet in Sacramento, Calif., 185,000 square feet in Farmington, Conn., and 400,000 square feet in Japan.