After luxury campgrounds gained a foothold in Maine during the early part of the coronavirus pandemic, new proposals for “glampgrounds” — where guests can stay for hundreds of dollars a night — have run into growing headwinds in the state in recent years.
But given the high demand for lodging to accommodate tourists along the coast, those developments may be here to stay or even expand in the coming years.
Proposals for such “glamorous camping” projects, which can include high-end yurts, domes and tents with amenities, started multiplying around Hancock County as people sought ways to get outside during the pandemic. The spacious, furnished structures often have air conditioning, heat, refrigerators, microwaves and WiFi.
Some have met local resistance, from ordinances limiting them in Lamoine and Tremont to an opposition group in Deer Isle-Stonington hiring lawyers for a lengthy battle until the developer gave up the project. Other projects around the state have also been hit with moratoriums.
At the same time, there has been a slight cool-off in the glamping industry postpandemic, according to a nationwide survey of campground owners and managers.
Despite that, the industry is predicted to grow nationally. And in rural Maine communities within a short drive of Acadia National Park — one of the biggest draws for increasing numbers of visitors to Maine — some developers continue investing in glamping.
Currently, a Deer Isle campground owner wants to build a new glamping site farther up the peninsula, and an established glampground in Surry is planning to expand.
While Maine has long relied on tourism as a major driver of its economy, the pushback against new glampgrounds has highlighted the state’s uneasy relationship with the industry and other types of development. Land is more scarce along the coast, where many of the sites have been proposed, and the projects are often seen as catering more to people from outside the state.
Caleb Scott has proposed a 48-unit glampground on a former mini golf and takeout site on Caterpillar Hill in Sedgwick, motivated by customer demand at the traditional campground he’s owned on Deer Isle for the last several years. In the summer months, he had to turn customers away from his existing campground.
After attending a recent convention on glamping, Scott said he’s convinced the industry is going to “take off.”
He’s proposing 16 geodesic domes of varying sizes, 16 tiny cabins and 16 basic tent sites with additional buildings, which he hopes to start opening this summer if the town’s planning board approves. The site would be an early franchise of Ferncrest, a Pennsylvania-based glampground company.
Like other recent development plans in the area, Scott’s proposal has already met with some strong local pushback and a Facebook group with membership in the hundreds dedicated to opposing it. He began working on the site’s existing roads before contacting the town, which fed suspicions, according to Sedgwick’s code enforcement officer, Duane Ford. Scott has since stopped work and a public hearing is scheduled for May 1.
The residents’ concerns include the availability of well water, which is typically limited on rocky Caterpillar Hill — although Scott believes there will be enough based on neighbors’ wells — as well as visible development, environmental impacts, increased traffic of vehicles on the road and boats on neighboring Walker Pond, and the campground’s capacity for 250 visitors.
Based on visitor data from his existing campground, Scott expects no more than 113 campers on any given night. The private campsites are set back from the road. Overall, he said, the proposal would create jobs, diversify the local economy, bring more customers to neighboring businesses, pay taxes and reopen the mini golf course to the public.
Scott, who also develops workforce housing in Stonington, noted the Sedgwick land was already a commercial site and the project wouldn’t take housing off the market, which short-term vacation rentals can do. Glamping offers some of the comfort of an Airbnb with the outdoor experience of camping, he said.
“I can definitely see the benefits of tourism … but there are also inherent drawbacks when it’s harder for people to afford property on-island,” he said. “This campground wouldn’t have any adverse effect on that.”
In Surry, established glampground Under Canvas plans to expand based on customer demand over the past four years.
Also a franchise, its tents with water views go for several hundred dollars to more than $900 nightly.
The Montana-based company wants to add 10-20 new tents and make minor changes to its stormwater system within its previous permits, a representative confirmed this week.
Under Canvas came to the area because Surry was less built up but could meet the demand for glamping sites near Acadia, developers said. The county’s other existing glampground, Terramor, is in Bar Harbor.
Though Scott’s first campground is more than an hour from the park, up to 40 percent of its visitors come there to see Acadia, he said. Part of his interest in developing the Sedgwick site is that it’s a reasonable drive from both Bar Harbor and Stonington, where visitors can board a boat for the Isle au Haut portion of the park.
Opposition to development projects isn’t new in Maine by any stretch. But some of the pushback to the Sedgwick project specifically is based on the perception it would provide lodging to people from away, according to Scott.
There is some loose evidence that interest in glamping may be much higher among people outside Maine than inside it. Google searches for “glamping” peaked nationwide in 2020 and have slowly declined since, according to data from the search engine, while in Maine, those lines have remained flat with occasional searches in the summer months.
Acadia doesn’t share where its visitors come from, but numbers have been increasing over the last decade and leading some Mainers to stop vacationing there. That increased traffic, and fears of more development with it, has fed resistance to glampgrounds.
“This is setting a precedent for more campgrounds, more glamping resorts … Do we want to become Trenton and do we want to become Mount Desert Island, Bar Harbor?” a resident said to applause at a 2023 hearing on the proposal that sparked Lamoine’s moratorium, the Maine Monitor reported. “Most of us don’t even want to go to Bar Harbor anymore.”