College of the Atlantic to build dorm to help shield students from runaway MDI housing prices

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • March 3, 2022

To help insulate its students from soaring housing costs on Mount Desert Island, College of the Atlantic is planning to build a new residential hall to house nearly 50 students. The college, located near downtown Bar Harbor, has an enrollment cap of 350 full-time students, of whom there is room for 168 to live on school grounds. The new dormitory, planned for the south end of the campus near other residential halls, will allow them to expand how many students they can have living on campus. The project is expected to be part of a broader, but gradual, goal to rearrange much of the school’s 36-acre shorefront campus. The school’s new $13 million Center for Human Ecology academic building, which opened last year, is considered part of that larger effort.