The state’s top court has rejected a challenge to a short-term rental permit that Bar Harbor granted in 2023.
Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court, also known as the Law Court, dismissed the appeal on Tuesday on the grounds that it is moot because the 2023 permit has since expired.
The legal dispute centers around two abutting luxury waterfront properties in the Bogue Chitto Lane subdivision, which was developed in the 2010s.
The owners of one property, 16 Bogue Chitto, appealed the town’s decision to issue a retroactive short-term rental permit in 2023 to the owners of an adjacent property at 12 Bogue Chitto. That retroactive issuance came after an online registration portal malfunctioned and the owner of 12 Bogue Chitto was not awarded a permit by a May 31 deadline.
Although it ultimately was determined to be moot, the dispute highlighted the growing tensions around the rise of short-term rentals in Maine’s pricey coastal communities over the last decade, as well as efforts to regulate them.
The owner of 12 Bogue Chitto Lane, Miami-based WARM Management LLC, had submitted the proper information through the registration portal prior to the May 31 deadline but did not learn that it had not been processed until after that deadline had passed, according to court documents. When the town found out, and realized the malfunctioning online portal had caused the problem, Angela Chamberlain, who at the time was the town’s code enforcement officer, retroactively granted WARM Management’s registration application.
The owners of 16 Bogue Chitto Lane, Monika and Brandan McCallion, challenged the retroactive permit to the town’s appeals board and, after the board upheld the permit, then took the matter to Hancock County Superior Court. That court also upheld the town’s decision to retroactively grant the permit.
The McCallions argued to the Law Court that, though they did not appeal the town’s decision to grant WARM Management a short-term rental permit in 2024, the lack of a proper permit in 2023 invalidates the 2024 permit. The type of short-term rental that the town approved for 12 Bogue Chitto Lane is not allowed in Bar Harbor’s shoreland residential zone unless it has been permitted each year since December 2021, and the lack of a properly approved permit in 2023 meant that the property could no longer function as a short-term rental, the McCallions claimed.
The Law Court disagreed. Because the McCallions did not appeal the town’s 2024 permit for 12 Bogue Chitto Lane, which the court said it does not have “the authority to disturb,” there is no practical relief that the court can offer on the now-expired 2023 permit. There also is “no reasonable likelihood” that the circumstances surrounding the town’s 2023 approval — in which the CEO remedies an unprocessed registration form that resulted from a website malfunction — will arise again, which also renders the appeal moot, the justices wrote.
The McCallions are former owners of Bar Harbor Manor, a 43-room hotel on Holland Avenue that they sold in 2022 for $8.1 million, according to MaineBiz. Their property at 16 Bogue Chitto Lane has an assessed value of $1.9 million, according to the town’s property tax records.
The property at 12 Bogue Chitto Lane has an assessed value of $1.8 million. It was not clear Tuesday how much 12 Bogue Chitto Lane can be rented for but another property on the private dead-end road — on the opposite side of the McCallions’ property — can be rented at rates ranging from $5,600 to $16,100 per week, according to The Knowles Company.
