Bar Harbor officials weigh path extension

BAR HARBOR – The town may have to change the zoning of a West Street property in order for a proposed path along the shore to be approved, according to a state official.

In seeking municipal approval for redeveloping the former Golden Anchor and Bar Harbor Club properties on West Street, hotel developer Thomas Walsh has offered to extend across the properties the 125-year-old municipal shore path that runs from Wayman Lane to the Bar Harbor Town Pier. The path, which provides access to the shore of scenic Frenchman Bay, is popular among residents and tourists.

Farther down West Street from the municipal pier, the path’s extension would skirt the shore in front of the new Harborside Hotel, which has been built where the Golden Anchor Motel once stood. Then, it would cross the front of the Bar Harbor Club property and end where Bridge Street meets a sand bar that connects Bar Island with Mount Desert Island at low tide. Bar Island, which is part of Acadia National Park, at low tide also is a popular walking site with tourists and residents.

Andrew Fisk, director of Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s bureau of land and water quality, said Monday that if the club’s zoning were changed from the shoreline limited residential zone to the shoreline general development zone, the shore path could be built no closer than 25 feet away from the high-tide mark. Otherwise, DEP officials have said, the path may not be allowed in the shoreline zone, which includes everything within 75 feet of the high-tide mark.

The Harborside Hotel property already is zoned shoreline general development, according to zone maps posted on the town’s Web site.

“There are some zoning issues that are problematic,” Fisk said. “It’s solvable.”

For one local official, however, the notion of having the path away from the shore will defeat the purpose of having a shore path at all.

“It absolutely will,” Robert Garland, chairman of the town’s planning board, said Tuesday. “It flies in the face of what’s taken place in urban environments and what we want to accomplish here.”

Garland said that the possibility of extending the shore path has been discussed locally for years, since before Walsh acquired and started redeveloping the West Street properties.

The Bar Harbor planning board last week approved changes that Walsh has proposed for the grounds in front of and adjacent to the Bar Harbor Club, which sat vacant and abandoned for years after it closed in the late 1980s. The board conditionally approved an unpermitted shorefront retaining wall that has been built on the property with the provision that Walsh get state approval for the structure, the top of which would double as a walkway for the proposed path extension.

State officials have said that if Walsh cannot get state approval for the existing wall, it may have to be removed or modified. Walsh’s representatives had said they are working with state officials to make sure the project meets state requirements.