Who are the property owners in Northeast Harbor who are fighting a proposed workforce housing project in the downtown village?
In short, they are wealthy seasonal residents who can easily afford to live in a place where affordable housing is nearly extinct.
Some of them are descended from the founders of big oil and steel companies. Others are connected to the world of finance. One of them sits on the board of a large MDI employer that has completed the construction of its own workforce housing project in Bar Harbor in recent years.
Their own properties range in value from $550,000 to $5 million.
The Heel Way project, which was approved by the local planning board in 2023, has been led by Mount Desert 365, an organization founded by year-round and seasonal residents to promote the town’s liveability.
The organization owns the property on the corner of Neighborhood and Manchester roads where an existing home would be renovated and five other housing units would be developed. It intends to put income-related covenants on the property so that year-round residents who work as teachers, firefighters, bank tellers or in other service-related jobs can live there and help keep the community functioning throughout the year.
The towns on Mount Desert Island have long been popular summer destinations, both for wealthy seasonal residents and for tourists who come to enjoy Acadia National Park. But as housing demand soared during the pandemic, and tourism has shot up in part because of the popularity of short-term vacation rentals, local home prices have increased significantly over the past decade.
“Mount Desert Island is an expensive place to live,” town officials wrote in court documents. “The Town [of Mount Desert] is facing an affordable housing crisis. The citizens of Mount Desert, as its legislative body at Town Meeting, have prioritized developing workforce housing.”
Last year, Mount Desert had a median home price of $907,250, or about two and a half times as high as the statewide median of $360,000, according to MaineHousing.
The town issued that legal filing in response to an appeal that seven local property owners pursued in the state’s business and consumer court. The complainants, whose summer homes are close to or directly border the project site, lost their appeal but are taking their arguments to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. It is not clear when the state’s top court will take up the matter.
Grady Burns, the neighbors’ Lewiston-based attorney who is overseeing their appeal, has not responded to multiple requests for comment about the dispute.
Here are the project opponents, listed in alphabetical order:
Marc and Ann Cannon
The Cannons own a 2,200-square-foot home on the corner of Graves Lane and Neighborhood Road, across the street from Heel Way. The house was built in 1950 and sits on a quarter-acre lot. The Cannons, whose legal residency is in St. Petersburg, Florida, bought the house in 2004 for $400,000, but the property now has an assessed value of $562,000. Marc Cannon describes himself on his social media pages as managing partner of MGC2, a firm based in St. Petersburg that works in advertising, marketing, communications and sports management.
Melissa Cannon Guzy
Guzy owns a property at 3 Graves Ln., next to Marc and Ann Cannon. Two houses sit on the quarter-acre property, one with 1,200 square feet of living space that was built in 1940, and another with 2,000 square feet of living space that was built in 2015. The total assessed value of the lot and two houses is just under $1 million.
Guzy is co-founder and a managing partner of Singapore-based venture capital firm Arbor. She also serves on the board of trustees of The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor — a big employer in the region that two years ago completed its own construction of a workforce housing project
It was not clear if Guzy is related to Marc and Ann Cannon.
Lamont Harris
Harris owns a 5,000-square-foot home at 14 Smallidge Point Rd. that was built in 2006. The house and a 1-acre lot it sits on, directly adjacent to Gilpatrick Cove, have a combined assessed value of $4.2 million. He is a great-great grandson of Henry M. Flagler, a co-founder of Standard Oil (now known as Exxon), and of Charles A. Lamont.
Stuart S. Janney III
Janney owns a 6,509-square-foot oceanfront home at 37 Smallidge Point Rd. that was built in 1920. The house and the 0.66-acre lot it sits on together have an assessed value of $3.7 million. Janney is a great-grandson of Henry Phipps, who co-founded Carnegie Steel and was founder of New York private equity firm Bessemer Trust, where Janney served as chairman.
Janney also owns and breeds racehorses — one of which won the Kentucky Derby in 2013 — and serves as an officer or board member for several racing associations.
Joseph T. Ryerson III
Ryerson owns a property at 3 Manchester Rd. that abuts the Heel Way property. The quarter-acre parcel has two houses on it — one built in 1948 with only 605 square feet of living space, and another built in 2016 that has nearly 1,300 square feet of living space. The property, including the houses on it, have a total assessed value of nearly $850,000.
His great-grandfather was the founder of Ryerson, a Chicago-based metals processing and distribution company.
Lynne Wheat
Along with her husband — former Credit Suisse First Boston CEO Allen D. Wheat — Lynne Wheat owns a home at 5 Smallidge Point Rd. The original part of the home, built in 1930, has 5,600 square feet of living space while a 2,100 square-foot addition was constructed in 2013. The house and the 3-acre parcel of oceanfront property it sits on together have an assessed value of $5.2 million.
