Mount Desert Island Hospital plans to open its new Main Street entrance in October. The Bar Harbor project covers 42,600 SF on a 5.61-acre site at 10 Wayman Lane. A $55 million campaign backs the work, and an emergency department growing to 10,524 SF follows as the next phase.
Mount Desert Island Hospital expects to open a new Main Street entrance in October, marking a visible milestone in a phased capital program on its Bar Harbor campus.
Work is proceeding on a 5.61-acre parcel at 10 Wayman Lane, where a 42,600 SF expansion is underway. Cost for that build-out is placed at $42 million, funded within a broader $55 million campaign that has drawn heavily on philanthropy rather than conventional debt. Television producer Dick Wolf, a seasonal Seal Harbor resident, contributed $10 million last year, and grant awards have supplemented donor gifts.
Relocating the front door is the organizing move behind the current phase. Emergency arrival has been positioned at the rear of the property since the last renovation of that entrance in 2000, screened from Main Street by the buildings in front of it. Drivers unfamiliar with the campus have had no direct visual cue from the road, a condition hospital leadership identified during the 2024 visitor season when arriving patients had difficulty locating the department. Mobility access has been a parallel concern, since the approach sequence required navigating the site rather than pulling directly to a marked entrance.
Correcting that condition called for physical changes to the site rather than signage alone. A short interior road running through the property was absorbed into the campus, several structures were demolished, and the building mass was reworked to present a primary face toward Main Street. Two separate points of arrival result from the redesign, with a main entrance addressing the street and a dedicated emergency entrance paired with a covered ambulance bay. Hospitals that have grown incrementally over long periods frequently accumulate this pattern of buried entrances, and resolving it typically requires demolition and sequencing around continuous clinical operations, since a critical access hospital maintains 24-hour capability throughout construction.
An emergency department addition follows as the next phase. Plans call for roughly 10,524 SF, about triple the existing footprint, with 16 care spaces, additional triage areas, expanded patient rooms, and ventilation designed to limit airborne transmission.
Demand at the facility varies sharply by season. Year-round population on the island is near 10,500, with about 5,500 in Bar Harbor, while emergency volumes roughly triple during the visitor season. Maine recorded approximately 15.3 million visitors in 2023, according to figures cited by hospital leadership.
Christina Maguire, president and chief executive of MDI Health, described the program’s goals in remarks to the Bangor Daily News. Town and state approvals are in place, with Planning Board sign-off granted in March 2025. MDI Hospital has operated on the island for 130 years.