Blue Hill’s planning board has denied a developer’s application to subdivide a blueberry barren into nine lots for high-end homes.
Wednesday’s unanimous vote, with one member absent and another abstaining, comes more than a year after Kennebunk-based builder Geoff Bowley proposed the project on 38 acres of former commercial blueberry land, which he bought in 2023.
While the vote was a long-awaited event, the barren’s fate is likely far from resolved.
“This is one step in a big process,” board chair Matthew Martin told a full town hall meeting room before deliberations began on Wednesday.
Bowley’s plans have met with strong resistance from local residents, who see the property along Route 172 as an important scenic and cultural resource. They wanted the Planning Board to deny the application based on criteria in the state’s subdivision laws that protect those qualities, and have also listed extensive environmental concerns.
On Wednesday, the board reviewed whether the proposal met each of the state’s 20 criteria for subdivisions and decided to deny the application based on aesthetic impact, along with whether it met the town’s ordinances and plans.
While Blue Hill doesn’t have zoning laws, the 1999 comprehensive plan that was in effect when Bowley made his proposal specifically names Allen Point as an area to protect, which board members said informed their decision. Comprehensive plans aren’t law, but they are used to help towns make planning decisions.
“This isn’t judgment,” member Scott Blanchard said. “This is reading what we were given to make a decision on this.”
Bowley declined to comment after the vote, but he has the option to appeal the decision. He previously said it’s also possible he will accept a buyout offer from Save the Salt Pond Blueberry Barrens, the organized group opposing his project that’s fundraising in an effort to offer him twice the $949,000 purchase price.
During discussion of the aesthetic criteria, Martin noted that the land is private property which looks the way it does because it’s been maintained as agricultural land. Bowley’s proposal was something the board could have some say over, he said, but whatever he does next may not be in its jurisdiction.
Bowley previously said that if the process goes on long enough, he may make a smaller subdivision years from now instead through a state law that allows it without planning board review.
