Voters in a rural ski town and a wealthy southern Maine community will decide Tuesday whether to allow for major new housing developments, but not everyone is on board.
The towns of Kingfield and Kennebunk belong to vastly different regions, but both are experiencing such a critical shortage of housing units that municipal officials there have agreed to rezone certain areas where dense projects are not allowed now.
It is a sign that Maine towns of all types are moving toward mixed-use developments and reconsidering local zoning to construct housing in the face of a statewide crisis. But the residents of these towns are going to decide. Victory is not assured at the ballot box, particularly in Kingfield, where the developers are already discussing shifting their focus.
Western Maine Mountain Housing is seeking voters’ permission to rezone a 7-acre plot behind the Dollar General store in Kingfield to build 27 apartments and 18 homes for local workers there. The project would be one of the first in Maine to make use of a new rural affordable housing rental program administered by the state housing authority.
Some residents of the Franklin County town have been spooked by misinformation around an immigrant housing project in Brunswick and expressed concerns at a recent public hearing about who the new development will “bring to town,” Mark Green, Western Maine Mountain Housing’s executive director, said.
“I’m not sure it’s going to pass. I’m worried about that, certainly,” he said. “There’s lots of supporters, typically younger people, but there’s a lot of folks that are distrustful.”
The need for housing is well-documented across the region. Green’s nonprofit was formed in response to a 2022 report that found the area was short around 650 workforce housing units. It is planning similar developments in Eustis and on Sugarloaf Mountain itself, Green said.
Regional employers including Sugarloaf and local restaurants are having trouble finding and retaining employees due to a lack of affordable housing. Only 17 percent of homes sold in 2021 were affordable to the average household, according to Western Maine Mountain Housing.
“It has been, and still is, difficult to hire qualified cooks and full-time front of the house employees because of the lack of housing,” John Goldfrank, owner of Longfellow’s restaurant in Kingfield, wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, last year.
The apartments built in Kingfield would be for those making 80 percent of the area median income, which is $48,500 annually for a two-person household. The single-family homes and townhouses would be for those making 120 percent of AMI, which would be around $73,000 annually for a two-person household.
The Kennebunk project is far different. Residents there will vote on a proposal to allow Kennebunk Savings Bank to develop a parcel of industrial land it owns on Alewive Park Road into 70 units of housing for seniors making up to 60 percent of the area’s median income, which would be $58,500 annually for a two-person household.
The bank has partnered with Avesta Housing to construct and manage the project, which would be built on what’s now a parking lot. Many seniors feel priced out of Kennebunk and are struggling to age in place in outsized single-family homes, Ryan Fecteau, a former Maine House Speaker who now works as a planning officer at Avesta, said.
“Housing is definitely a challenge within this community,” Christopher Osterrieder, Kennebunk’s community development director, said. “We hope that [older residents] move in here and create space in their homes they’ve lived in for a long time. I think it’s going to be very helpful.”
Voters are not deciding on the minutiae of these projects themselves on Tuesday. The question they’re facing is whether these areas of land should be rezoned for the new uses — residential in Kennebunk, and higher density in Kingfield.
This practice is called “contract zoning,” referring to a deal made between a landowner and municipality to rezone a parcel of land so it has fewer restrictions. It is not done often, although Kennebunk predictably sees at least one case every couple of years, Osterrider said.
In both Kennebunk and Kingfield, development plans are far from finalized and there will be opportunities for public input to shape these projects in coming months. Kingfield’s town manager was unavailable this week to discuss local concerns about the project, but Green said he’s still hopeful the contract zone question will be approved.
For his part, Osterrieder said he’d never heard of an initiative like this being voted down. In both Kingfield and Kennebunk, all select board and planning board members voted in favor of the contract zone proposal.
Green and the other directors of the Carrabassett Valley group are already scheduled to meet Wednesday in case the measure is voted down, he said. If it fails to pass, Green will recommend they shift focus to developments in other communities.
“[If] they’re not ready for us, we shouldn’t be in there trying to foist ourselves on them,” Green said, adding, “I wish I was more confident.”
