David C. Witham, a Bar Harbor hotelier whose empire of properties includes several of the town’s most iconic resorts, says Mount Desert Island’s premier tourist hub should renew its freeze on new lodging developments.
His position comes as the Bar Harbor Town Council approved a 180-day freeze on the building and expansion of large hotels, which is intended to give the local planning board more time to address lodging-related amendments to the town’s land use ordinance, according to the Bar Harbor Story.
The ordinance changes seek to address years of a shrinking year-round housing supply — the town declared a housing emergency in 2019.
“I support the overarching goals that the community and the planning department are trying to achieve,” Witham, whose portfolio includes the oceanfront Bar Harbor Inn and downtown Bar Harbor Grand Hotel, told the Bangor Daily News on Monday. “But right now, it feels that it’s gotten rushed, and the language I don’t think provides enough clarity or foresees potential issues it could create down the road.”
Witham runs Witham Family Hotels, the hospitality empire his father David J. Witham began in the 1980s.
The council voted 7-0 to renew the freeze — which could be in effect until March 2027 unless it’s lifted beforehand — following a public hearing on Tuesday evening. Councilors also heard public comments on the proposed land use ordinance amendments.
The move extended a moratorium that has been in place with multiple renewals since November 2024. The freeze, targeting development of the largest hotels in seven districts, including downtown and shoreland zones, will be more limited in scope than its predecessors.
Witham said he isn’t the only hotel owner to support the extended freeze.
“I communicated this idea to other folks in the lodging industry on the island — hoteliers — and I thought there would be this tremendous pushback, like ‘why are you doing this,’ but it was almost universal support to extend it,” Witham said. “Because everyone wants to get it right.”
Still, not all locals agree with Witham’s position.
“We are entering almost two years into this moratorium, and with each renewal the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce has urged the council to not extend this moratorium,” the chamber’s director Everal Eaton said during Tuesday’s public hearing. “We’re back here tonight with the same request. The moratorium continues to create instability for business owners on what was meant to be a temporary freeze intended to study the issue at hand.”
Witham said he thinks the lodging industry has contributed to the loss of year-round housing but it is not “worthy of the bullseye many put on it for the housing challenges,” particularly when compared to the impact of the “explosion of short-term rentals” in Bar Harbor.
“Yes, there are some in the lodging industry who have contributed to the removal of some year-round housing, but I think it’s out of proportion when you look at other contributing factors,” Witham said, noting that the same could be said of other local institutions like the College of the Atlantic, MDI Hospital and the Jackson Laboratory. “All of those things contribute to making it unaffordable.”
The discussion around lodging limitations in Bar Harbor has raised concerns that such ordinances will push development off island, to neighboring mainland municipalities of Trenton and Ellsworth. Witham noted that this has already happened.
“The moratorium has created an environment where I suspect potential developers will find the local environment to not be welcoming to such projects and will look elsewhere,” Witham said.