Chapter 13: Existing Land Use

Purpose

This chapter discusses existing land use patterns in Ogunquit. Understanding land use patterns, the history of how land has been modified for human activity and used to date, and recent trends is important for determining the Town’s ability to absorb future growth. The Growth Management Act of 1988 was the catalyst for a more technical examination of how Maine cities and towns should manage their growth and was the result of a decade of extremely strong residential growth.

The major emphasis of the law then, and now, was how to provide for growth in specific areas (Growth Areas) served by public infrastructure (particularly water and sewer), close to municipal services while also maintaining rural areas able to support natural resource-based industries, wildlife habitat, and conservation of natural features.

The major emphasis of the law then and now was how to provide for growth in specific areas (Growth Areas) served by public infrastructure (particularly water and sewer), close to municipal services while also maintaining rural areas able to support natural resource-based industries, wildlife habitat, and conservation of natural features. The State of Maine considers the Land Use chapter of any comprehensive plan to be the essential part of the plan. Specifically, this section:

Summarizes the breakdown of developed and undeveloped land in terms of estimated acreage and
Discusses the regulatory regimen that facilitates land development activities within the Town.
Provides an overview of land use trends, issues, and the general trajectory of how land is likely to be used in the feature.

Background and Land Use History

The Town consists of approximately 2,443 acres of land (4.18 square miles), includes a 3.5-mile-long barrier beach and dune system, and is bisected north-south by the Maine Turnpike (Interstate 95).

Ogunquit is a unique coastal community with a history steeped in appreciation of nature, the ocean, and the arts. As is the case throughout Maine, the land on which the town sits was once occupied by the Wabanaki indigenous people. The community has long been a haven of the arts within southern Maine. Formerly an incorporated village in the Township of Wells, Ogunquit incorporated as a standalone jurisdiction in 1980. The town consists of approximately 2,443 acres of land (4.18 square miles), includes a 3.5-mile-long barrier beach and dune system, and is bisected north-south by the Maine Turnpike (Interstate 95).

The eastern side of Town includes the overwhelming majority of developed land as well as sandy beaches and dunes, restaurants, and the Town’s central business district, with dozens of small-scale retail storefronts. Each day during the summer high tourism season, tens of thousands of people per day visit the Town to enjoy its world class beaches, independent restaurants, and small retail establishments. West of the Maine Turnpike, settlement patterns are rural, primarily consisting of conservation areas interspersed with a small number of homes. Between these two divergentareas lies a vibrant commercial community centered on Route 1 and housing located on small lots, with single family homes interspersed with larger buildings.

The first zoning Ordinance was adopted in 1957, and by then, the Village of Ogunquit was already a mature community with development patterns in place for decades. Today, the Town consists of 1,578 parcels of land split into 16 zoning districts.

Development in Ogunquit predates the establishment of the zoning and land use regulations that are in use today. In Maine, the first local zoning and subdivision Ordinances were adopted in the 1920s. In Ogunquit, the first zoning Ordinance was adopted in 1957, and by then, the Village of Ogunquit was already a mature community with development patterns in place for decades. Today, the Town consists of 1,578 parcels of land split into 16 zoning districts, each with a specific regulatory purpose designed to facilitate the orderly growth of the community and to maintain a high quality of life for residents, businesses, and visitors.

This Land Use inventory chapter seeks to provide a clear picture as to how land in the community is inhabited today, to aid in decision-making as to where growth should be directed in the future to help meet regional housing needs and how to best preserve undisturbed natural areas for the foreseeable future.

Throughout Maine, zoning is intended to serve as the vehicle for implementing the goals, strategies, and policies of the Comprehensive Plan, serving as the blueprint and framework for the preservation and development of inhabited land. In Ogunquit, the last Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2003, with the current zoning ordinance adopted into law in 1998, in compliance with the statutory requirements of the Growth Management Act and most recently amended in 2018. This Land Use chapter seeks to provide a clear picture as to how land in the community is inhabited today, to aid in decision-making as to where growth should be directed in the future to help meet regional housing needs and how to best preserve undisturbed natural areas for the foreseeable future.

Existing Land Use Analysis

Data provided by the Town Assessor’s office was used to analyze how land in the town is used today. Below is a table that breaks down the land uses into separate categories:

Residential(includes single family, two family, and multifamily housing of all types)
Commercial(includes retail businesses, offices, restaurants, hotels and other lodging and related hospitality uses, commercial parking lots and related uses)
Industrial(includes areas with light manufacturing uses, and in certain cases, utility- oriented uses if privately owned and operated)
Vacant(includes both undisturbed land and land that may have previously contained a structure that has since been demolished)
Public(includes Town-owned land, land owned by other government entities, churches, other non-private entities, or held in trusts)

Residential uses constitute the overwhelming majority of parcels, at 77.4%, as well as the largest single aggregation of acreage by use type, at 44.7% of town acreage.

For the purposes of this analysis, these categories are mutually exclusive. In other words, a parcel cannot be coded as both vacant and public/tax exempt; if owned by a church, for example, the parcel would be coded as public/tax exempt, but if privately owned and vacant, it would likely contain a vacant code. As the table on the next page and accompanying land use map show, residential uses constitute the overwhelming majority of
parcels, at 77.4%, as well as the largest single aggregation of acreage by use type, at 44.7% of Town acreage. Commercial land represents just under 10% of parcels in the town and 5% of town acreage. Vacant land constitutes nearly 27% of Town acreage; the hundreds of acres of undeveloped land ﬂanking both sides of Interstate 95 and between Berwick Road to the south and Captain Thomas Road to the north fall into this category, as does much of the public/tax exempt land (22.6% of Town acreage) and some beachfront parcels. At between approximately five and nine acres in size on average, these constitute the largest parcels of land in the Town, while residential and commercial parcels are the smallest, at 0.9 and 0.83 acres, respectively. Regarding parcel sizes, in Maine, beachfront parcel boundaries extend to the low water mark; this means that beachfront parcels may be quite large but have an actual land area that is significantly less.

Residential Land Uses

The following table provides a breakdown of where residential uses are located within the Town, and the analysis reveals that the R (Residential) district contains the greatest share of these uses, at 26.2% of residential land in the Town. The Farm (F) zoning district west of the Maine Turnpike, contains the second largest number of parcels coded as residential, at 24.4% of the total share of residential land in the Town. The Downtown Business zone, which prohibits almost all residential uses, has less than 1% of land coded for residential uses. The Shoreland General Development zones, which prohibit most residential use except single- and two-family residences and upper- story accessory dwellings in commercial buildings, also have a miniscule share of this land use type. For the purposes of this analysis, percentages below 0.1% appear as rounded to 0.0%.

Residential Development Analysis

In 2010, Ogunquit had approximately 2,009 total housing units. That increased to 2,104 by 2020 (4.7%); this is less than the housing growth in neighboring Wells as well as that of York County, but greater than the growth in housing stock within the Town of York and the state at large.

As of this writing, Ogunquit has 97 multi-unit structures with 2,089 dwelling units.

As of this writing, Ogunquit has 97 multi-unit structures with 2,089 dwelling units. Multifamily residential structures have become more popular and accepted development in recent years, especially in southern York County, with further development of this type expected to increase statewide pursuant to the Maine Statute Title 30-A, §4364-B. The table below includes a breakdown of the number of detached single-family homes that received a building permit during the year in question. As the table shows, 2021 represented a peak in permits issued, with numbers fluctuating between a low of seven in 2018 and 2021’s 17 issuances.

Single Family Home Starts 2015-2023
Year	Number of Starts
2023	15
2022	13
2021	17
2020	10
2019	12
2018	7
2017	12
2016	14
2015	14

The following table breaks down the allocation of residential units by zoning district. The Residential (R) zoning district that ﬂanks the Route 1 corridor has the greatest share of units among all of the zones, at 34.5%, followed by Shoreland Limited Residential (SLR) at 21.4%. Interestingly, nearly all of the zoning districts, even those with purpose statements that emphasize nonresidential uses, contain at least one dwelling unit, with the exception of the Shoreland General Development 1 (SG1) district.

Commercial Land Uses

The General Business 1 zone, which contains the core of downtown Ogunquit, holds 9.6% of commercial land uses within just 11.26 acres of land.

On the next page is a table that breaks out commercial land uses by zones. The data shows that the General Business 2 zone that extends north-south along the Route 1 corridor contains the largest share of these uses, with the many hotels, inns, and other hospitality-related uses within the Shoreland Limited Commercial containing another 24.9% of these uses.

The General Business 1 zone, which contains the core of downtown Ogunquit, holds 9.6% of commercial land uses within just 11.26 acres of land, which is indicative of the small commercial lots that are home to retail storefronts and restaurants within the densest part of the town. The presence of a small (<1%) number of commercial uses in the One Family Residential zone, which prohibits all commercial uses, indicates that pockets of nonconforming commercial uses exist there, as is the case for the Residential zone, which con Existing Industrial Use al uses within 4.1 acres. The commercial uses in these areas likely predate the establishment of Ogunquit’s current zoning ordinance and are grandfathered as a legally non-conforming use.

Zone	Acres Coded for Commercial Use	Share of Acres for Commercial Use
DB – Downtown Business	5.08	3.9%
F – Farm	0.00	0.0%
GB1 – General Business 1	12.60	9.6%
GB2 – General Business 2	40.43	30.9%
LB – Limited Business	9.01	6.9%
OFR – 1 Family Residential	0.93	0.7%
R – Residential	4.14	3.2%
RR1 – Rural Residential 1	0.00	0.0%
RR2 – Rural Residential 2	0.00	0.0%
SG1 – Shoreland Gen. Develop 1	1.90	1.5%
SG2 – Shoreland Gen. Develop 2	2.67	2.0%
SG3 – Shoreland Gen. Develop 3	2.44	1.9%
SLC – Shoreland Limited Comm.	32.48	24.9%
SLR – Shoreland Limited Res.	18.06	13.8%
SP – Stream Protection	0.40	0.3%
RP – Resource Protection	0.53	0.4%
Total	130.14	99.6%
Shoreland Zone Subtotal	57.94	44.3%

Industrial/Manufacturing Land Use

As shown in the table on the next page, very few industrial uses are located in the Town; two sites coded as industrial include a CMP substation at 23 Main St, and a building owned and operated by Consolidated Communications at 684 Main Street; while coded as industrial within Assessor’s data, both are functionally utility-oriented uses.

Zone	Acres Coded for Industrial Use	Share of Acres for Industrial Use
DB – Downtown Business	0.00	0.0%
F – Farm	0.00	0.0%
GB1 – General Business 1	0.00	0.0%
GB2 – General Business 2	1.03	6.4%
LB – Limited Business	0.00	0.0%
OFR – 1 Family Residential	0.00	0.0%
R – Residential	0.00	0.0%
RR1 – Rural Residential 1	0.00	0.0%
RR2 – Rural Residential 2	13.90	86.4%
SG1 – Shoreland Gen. Develop 1	0.00	0.0%
SG2 – Shoreland Gen. Develop 2	0.00	0.0%
SG3 – Shoreland Gen. Develop 3	0.00	0.0%
SLC – Shoreland Limited Comm.	0.00	0.0%
SLR – Shoreland Limited Res.	0.00	0.0%
SP – Stream Protection	0.00	0.0%
RP – Resource Protection	1.16	7.2%
Total	14.92	92.8%
Shoreland Zone Subtotal	0.00	0.0%

Vacant Land Use

59 percent of vacant land lies within the Farm zoning district, west of the Maine Turnpike. This 354-acre assemblage of land, most of which are landlocked, undeveloped parcels without access to street frontage, public sewers, or other infrastructure, appears as one contiguous wooded area that extends to the Wells and South Berwick town lines. However, vacant land can be found in other districts, most notable the Rural Residential 1 District (17.8%), the Residential District (12.1%), and the Resource Protection District (4.6%). Given their distance from Route 1, the very high cost of economic and political capital that would be needed to build a new Maine Map of vacant land Turnpike interchange, and the need to build out a new street network (likely through the subdivision process) to allow access to these parcels, they are highly likely to stay in an undeveloped state for the foreseeable future. Additionally, a significant share of land in this area is wetlands, as shown in blue to the right.

Public/Tax Exempt Land Use

Much of the Town’s share of public and tax-exempt land is located east of the Maine Turnpike, in the Rural Residential 1 zone (50.2%). Based upon observed signage, a portion of this is Maine Tree Farmland, while other lands lie in trusts for the expressed purpose of maintaining these parcels as undisturbed land. Like the vacant lands west of the Maine Turnpike, these parcels, some of which are quite large with an average size of more than nine acres, lack access to street frontage and below grade utilities, which presents an obstacle to any future development. The image to the right shows where the existing municipal sewer systems are located (in green), well east of these parcels.

Existing Zoning Districts

Zoning controls the land uses in a community by encumbering all zoned land with requirements as to what may be built, where it may be built, and how to do so in a manner that mitigates impacts on natural areas and reduces the potential for conflicts between abutting property owners. The ability for a community to enact local zoning is delegated from the State to local government, with communities generally having wide latitude to zone in a way that is consistent with the locally adopted comprehensive plan and State statute. While zoning cannot create a real estate market where it does not already exist, it does influence the market in powerful ways.

Ogunquit has nine general districts and six shorelandzoning districts.

Both the Town zoning map and zoning code (Chapter 225 of the Town Code) are legal documents in nature and thus changing them to facilitate different forms of development is a legislative act subject to a high degree of scrutiny. As zoning encourages certain uses within a given zoning district while discouraging other uses, it is a regulatory tool that provides a community with predictable parameters for how growth is likely to occur. When examining the current zoning regimen in Ogunquit, it is important to recognize the residential development pattern in Town and the commercial opportunities available in specific areas. Ogunquit has nine general districts and six shoreland zoning districts. The following is the list of zones, including the purpose statement for each, as described within the Ogunquit Zoning Ordinance:

Residential Districts:

One-Family Residential District (OFR) To preserve the physical aesthetic and social quality of Ogunquit’s developed residential areas. Residential District (R) To provide areas within the Town of Ogunquit for future residential growth consistent with anticipated growth demands. Rural Residential District 1 (RR1) To preserve the rural nature of large sections of the Town and to discourage large-scale development from occurring in areas of the Town of Ogunquit that cannot be readily serviced by public utilities. Rural Residential District 2 (RR2) To preserve the rural nature of large sections of the Town and to discourage large-scale development from occurring in areas of the Town that cannot be readily serviced by public utilities. Shoreland Limited Residential District (SLR) The Shoreland Limited Residential District includes those areas suitable for residential and recreational development. It includes areas other than those in the Resource Protection District, or Stream Protection District, and areas used less intensively than those in the Shoreland Limited Commercial District or the Shoreland General Development Districts.

Business and Commercial Districts:

Downtown Business District (DB) To provide general retail sales, services and business space within the downtown area of the Town of Ogunquit in locations capable of conveniently servicing community-wide and/or regional trade areas and oriented primarily to pedestrian access.

General Business District 1 (GB1) To preserve the architectural character inherent in the district and to provide general retail sales, services and business space within the Town of Ogunquit in locations capable of conveniently servicing community-wide and/or regional trade areas and oriented to automobile and pedestrian access.

General Business District 2 (GB2) To provide general retail sales, services and business space within the Town of Ogunquit in locations capable of conveniently servicing community-wide and/or regional trade areas and oriented primarily to automobile access.

Limited Business District (LB) To preserve the architectural character inherent in the Limited Business District and thus maintain the property’s value.

Shoreland Limited Commercial District (SLC) The Limited Commercial District includes areas of mixed, light commercial and residential uses, exclusive of the Stream Protection District, which should not be developed as intensively as the Shoreland Districts. This district includes areas of two or more contiguous acres in size devoted to a mix of residential and low-intensity business and commercial uses. Industrial use is prohibited.

Shoreland General Development Districts (SG1, SG2, SG3) Ogunquit Beach, Perkins Cove, and Ogunquit Playhouse. The General Development Districts include the following types of existing, intensively developed areas:

Areas of two or more contiguous acres devoted to commercial or intensive recreationalactivities, or a mix of such activities, including but not limited to the following:
- Areas devoted to lodging, restaurant, retail trade, nonprofit performing artstheaters, and service activities, or other commercial activities; and
- Areasdevoted to intensive recreational development and activities, such as, but not limited to, trails and public
Areas otherwise discernible as having patterns of intensive commercial or recreational

Other Zoning Districts:

Farm District (F) To provide space for farming in the Town of Ogunquit in locations capable of conveniently servicing the needs of such establishments and preserving open space in rural areas of the community without negatively impacting the established character of the Town or adjoining zoning districts. Stream Protection District (SP) The Stream Protection District includes all land areas within 75 feet, horizontal distance, of the normal high-water line of a stream, exclusive of those areas within 250 feet, horizontal distance, of the normal high-water line of a great pond, or river, or within 250 feet, horizontal distance, of the upland edge of a freshwater or coastal wetland. Where a stream and its associated shoreland area are located within 250 feet, horizontal distance, of the above water bodies or wetlands, that land area shall be regulated under the terms of the shoreland district associated with that water body or wetland. Resource Protection District (RP) The Resource Protection District shall include the following areas when they occur within the limits of any Shoreland Zone, exclusive of the Stream Protection District, except that areas which are currently developed and areas which meet the criteria for Shoreland Limited Commercial or Shoreland General Development need not be included within the Resource Protection District:

Innontidal shoreland areas, the land area below the upland edge or high-water line of any freshwater wetland, river, or
Areaswithin 250 feet, horizontal distance, of the upland edge of freshwater wetlands, salt marshes and salt meadows, and wetlands associated with great ponds and rivers.
Floodplainsalong rivers and floodplains along artificially formed great ponds along
Withinthe Shoreland Zones, areas of two or more contiguous acres with sustained slopes of 20% or
Within the Shoreland Zones, areas of two or more contiguous acres supporting wetlandvegetation and hydric soils, which are not part of a freshwater or coastal wetland as defined, and which are not connected to a water body during the period of normal high
Landareas along rivers subject to severe bank erosion, undercutting, or riverbed movement, and lands adjacent to tidal waters which are subject to severe erosion or mass movement, such as steep coastal
Anysignificant wildlife habitat, including significant vernal pools, as defined in the Department of Environmental Protection, Chapter 335, Rules on Significant Wildlife Habitats, whether or not they are included on the Official Zoning map.

Land Use Regulatory Structure

Town Codes and Planning staff The Town’s Codes and Planning office, serves as the professional staff charged with working with architects, developers, engineers, regulatory boards, and the public to ensure that growth and development within Ogunquit takes place in accordance with all applicable Town codes. SMPDC reviews land use applications in coordination with the Planning Board. Codes and Planning staff have the ability to conduct staff approvals for certain categories of uses, such as single-family homes and other low impact uses, allowing them to proceed to a building permit application without review by the Planning Board.

Regulatory Boards

PlanningBoard: this five-member appointed body is tasked with administering the Town’s zoning ordinance, site plan
standards, and subdivision Actions carried out by the Planning Board include site plan review,

subdivision review, design review, and recommendations on zoning applications.

Zoning Board of Appeals: this five-memberappointed body hears petitions for variances to the Town’s land use regulatory standards by applicants as well as Administrative

OgunquitHistoric Preservation

Commission: Per Chapter 97 of the Town Code, the OHPC is requested to comment on applications filed with the Planning Board that affect buildings in the District constructed prior to December 31, 1930.

Conservation Commission: this seven-member board, constituted per Chapter 49 of the Town Code, reviews development applications to ensure that impacts to natural resources and wildlife are minimal, to protect open space, and to implement policy recommendations in the Comprehensive Plan related to the natural

Design Review: Preserving the architectural character and charm of the village of Ogunquit is important to the residents and visitors to the town. Through the Design Review process the Planning Board works to ensure that the renovations to existing structures and new construction are designed in a manner compatible with the character of a given area.

The Town also maintains a map (see following map) delineating floodplains and ensures the floodplain management ordinance is up to date, is consistent with State and federal standards, and is consistently enforced. The flood plains are protected by the application of the shoreland zoning regulations, and the Town also participates in the National Flood Insurance Program.

The following charts describe current lot dimensional standards.

Overview of Land Use Factors Impacting Development

Bodack v Ogunquit case

As described within the Transportation chapter, the 2006 Bodack v Ogunquit case, which requires that any new development within one mile of the Berwick Road/Route 1 intersection show no net impacts on the level of service on roadways, has resulted in the curtailment of development that would have otherwise taken place in the community. As land use and transportation are intimately tied together, and new land uses typically have a baseline increment of new vehicular trip generation associated with them, this threshold likely proves an impossible test for many projects to meet and thus halts most new development in the town within the one-mile intersection radius.

Formula Restaurants

As set forth is Sec. 225-7.13 of the zoning code, Ogunquit does not allow formula restaurants within the community, along with any restaurants with a drive-through window.

Per the Zoning ordinance, the definition of a formula restaurant is as follows:

Formula Restaurant shall mean a restaurant thatstandsaloneas aprincipaluse or with another use as an accessory use, and which prepares food or beveragesonsite for sale to the public, and which is required by contractual or other arrangements to maintain any one or more of the following standardized features, which causes it to be substantially identical to other restaurants, regardless of the ownership or location of those other restaurants: name, menu, food preparation and presentation format; decor, employee uniforms, architectural design, signage; oranyother similar standardized features.

The General Business 1 zone, which contains the core of downtown Ogunquit, holds 9.6% of commercial land uses within just 11.26 acres of land.

This provision within the ordinance is designed to ensure that the Route 1 corridor in Ogunquit does not become a formula restaurant corridor with chain, franchised fast food restaurants as is frequently found in communities across the US. The Town’s survey results also indicated a strong desire to restrict this type of formula development for other land use categories, such as retail and lodging.

Short Term Home Rentals Short-term home rentals are currently an issue being confronted by every coastal community in southern Maine. Currently, Ogunquit requires owners who wish to rent their property on a short- term basis (a minimum of seven days) to register with the Town. The issues that frequently arise in discussion regarding short term home rentals include:

Thenumber of individuals staying at aproperty at any one
Thenoise from overnight parties and accumulation of trash occurring on short- term rental

Implications of short-term rentals for the local housing market.

As of June 2023, there were 238 active Short-Term Rentals within the town per data provided by the AirDNA.

As of June 2023, there were 238 active Short- Term Rentals within the Town per data provided by the AirDNA database; note this number does fluctuate significantly, generally peaking in the third quarter of the year.

Projected Land Acreage Needed for Development

The Housing inventory chapter includes housing demand projections based on a 12.6% and 25.3% increase in population between 2020 and 2040. Utilizing the 2020 household size of 1.91 persons as the baseline, this analysis yielded an estimate of between 193 and 343 additional housing units needed by 2040. For the purposes of this analysis, these calculations assume that the existing zoning dimensional and use requirements contained in the Ogunquit Zoning Ordinance remain as-is in perpetuity.
As contained within the parcel dataset used to complete the analyses within this chapter, the average parcel size for lots coded as single family within the Assessor’s record is 0.7 acres, 0.33 acres for lots coded as two-family, and 2.16 acres for lots coded as containing three or more units. This works out to a calculated average of 1.42 units per acre for single family residences,
6.06 units per acre for two family residences, and 5.8 units per acre for three or more units. Using the single family average parcel size of 0.7 acres per parcel and assuming household sizes stay the same at 1.91 persons per household, the town would need 135.1 acres of additional developed land area to accommodate the needed housing units using the 12.6% growth scenario, up to as much as 240.1 acres under the higher 25.3% growth scenario. However, when the smaller two-family parcel average size of 0.33 acres is used for this calculation, only
63.69 acres of developed land area are needed under the 12.6% growth scenario, up to 113.19 acres under the 25.3% growth scenario. This reduction demonstrates the ability of denser residential development patterns to help conserve land within the community, reducing impacts on natural areas.

Conclusion

Ogunquit’s future development is restricted because most undeveloped land is open space or woodland in the Farm District or along rivers and streams. The future population estimates the Town will need at least 193 more homes in the next ten years. Most of that growth will come from the expansion of use from single-family homes to multi-unit homes or the addition of accessory dwelling units.

The future population estimates the Town will need at least 193 more homes in the next ten years.

Industrial use is prohibited in Ogunquit. Commercial use is limited to districts along Route 1, Shore Road and the downtown area. There are very few undeveloped parcels in growth districts, so future growth will have to be accommodated by change of use or redevelopment of existing properties.