Up in the air: Treehouse vacation rentals proposed in Ellsworth
Courtesy / Arbor House Properties LLC
The map shows proposed treehouse sites at the top and a campground at the bottom. The Union River is at left.
A proposed development in Ellsworth would include nine treehouses for the short-term rental market.
The city’s planning board held a sketch plan review of the 30-acre parcel at 30 Old Mill Road, north of the downtown and adjacent to the Union River.
The proposal is to create a 10-lot subdivision that includes the treehouses and a campground.
The lot’s owner is Arbor House Properties LLC, which is owned by three principals who closed on the property in June. Builder Tim Stone lives in Otter Creek, a village of Bar Harbor. Matt Krivonen is a structural engineer who lives in Billings, Montana. Scott Bradshaw, who is a civil and environmental engineer, lives in Bozeman, Montana.
The proposal, Bradshaw said, is for a low-impact, low-density project that maintains the natural character of the wooded property and preserves the riparian area.
The acreage falls into three zoning districts — neighborhood, urban and limited residential shoreland.
The proposal would create nine residential lots on the east side of the property along to the north end, with a campground on the south end.
An old carriage house on the south end would be converted to a caretaker residence for the six-campsite seasonal campground as well as a game center and laundry facility.
The year-round treehouses would be built as complete dwelling units, including water and sewer, heating and insulation, and conventional spaces such as kitchen, bathroom and living areas.
“We’d rent those out as short-term rentals,” Bradshaw said.
Other features of the development would include an access road through middle of the property, a storage shed next to the carriage house to store tents for the winter and a fire road turnaround at the end of the access road. Still in discussion with city planners is whether the development would be served by a water line or wells and by fire cisterns or hydrants.
Bradshaw said treehouses would have more breathing room than a typical campsite. The city requires that campgrounds have a minimum of 5,000 square feet for each site, whereas the Arbor House Properties proposal calls for 20,000 square feet, or half an acre, per site.
“Our goal is to have a development that is very naturalized and peaceful for our guests,” he said.
Bradshaw said contrary to some forms of construction, the treehouses would not be anchored to trees. Instead, they would be built atop concrete piers in the ground and then stilts on top of that. Each would be about 500 square feet.
“All very compact and small,” he said.
The general sense among planning board members was that the proposal was unusual for the area. They said they look forward to a closer review of zoning requirements across the three zones, as well as a traffic impact analysis and wetland survey.
“We’d be working with the city through the building permit process to ensure that we’re building to the standards necessary,” Bradshaw said.
The development would generate several jobs and help attract tourists to the city, he said.
The goal, he said, is to have engineering studies and final plans in place this winter in time to have permits issued next spring for construction of the campground so that it can be operational by next summer.
If approved, construction of the first treehouse would begin next summer to fall, with a plan to build two treehouses per year after that.
“We recognize that what we’re doing is unique," Bradshaw said.
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