Gold Coast development wins OK

SOUTHWEST HARBOR – After two years, 30 meetings and $175,000, real estate developer Steve Gillespie won approval Thursday for his eight-lot Gold Coast subdivision on Fernald Point Road.

“I admire your diligence and stamina,” Gillespie told the planning board after its final vote on the project. “We’ve all been a long time pregnant.”

Stephen Homer, representing a group of about 20 neighbors who have bitterly opposed the project, said the group would review the board’s decision and then decide whether to file an appeal.

“We’ll examine the outcome of tonight” before making a decision, Homer said after the meeting.

The planning board’s exhaustive review of the application is believed to be the most thorough ever in the town, in part because of the stiff opposition from Fernald Point Road homeowners. Even residents of Mount Desert weighed in to oppose the project, saying their views across Somes Sound from Northeast Harbor would be ruined.

The planning board, like the neighbors, had myriad concerns about Gillespie’s proposal to subdivide a 20-acre parcel on a mountainous tract in the popular residential area.

Their concerns included traffic and road impact, water runoff and erosion, and whether the housing development would have an “undue adverse effect” on the aesthetic, cultural and natural values of the area.

In the end, the board voted unanimously that Gillespie’s project complied with all local and state subdivision laws, in addition to the town’s comprehensive plan and land use ordinance.

The board, however, imposed numerous technical and practical conditions on the approval, particularly a ban on heavy construction vehicle traffic before 8 a.m. once Gillespie starts building the subdivision. The work would be limited to installing a sewage system for the development and building and paving a road, estimated to cost $275,000, according to Gillespie’s plan.

Buyers of Gillespie’s house lots would be responsible for their own construction and permitting.

Of all of the standards the board had to consider in approving the project, several board members wrestled most with their decision about whether the new housing project would damage the aesthetic and natural values of the area.

Although members agreed that the eight new homes would have an impact on the area and on some homeowners’ views of the water, none could find where the project would have an “undue” negative impact.

Board member Carolyn Maling said she studied the ordinances and could find nothing that would prohibit Gillespie from going forward.

“If I had a reason to hand a ‘no’ vote on, I would have found it by now,” she said.

Gillespie, who filed his subdivision application in February 2001, said he has spent $175,000 in planning, legal and engineering costs getting the project approved.