RV parks a magnet for flimflammery

We can now confirm that campgrounds and RV parks are no longer backwaters of commercial real estate—indeed, that they have come to fill the niche once occupied by time-shares and dredged swampland. RV parks have become the latest get-rich-quick scheme (as see here, here or here), a siren call for grifters, flim-flam artists and speculators who wouldn’t know a blackwater valve from a city water connection but who will fill your head with visions of free-spending campers parking for a few days, dumping a load of cash and then moving on again. It’s just free money!

Is your community economically disadvantaged? Is it, perchance, located in a largely rural or agricultural area? Why then, you might be just what the hustlers are looking for, as they roll into town with their barrels of snake oil and their fast-talking prescriptions for all that ails you, weaving fanciful word pictures of the Truly! Amazing!! wonders that they will create. A first-class development—no, a royal development, fit for a king! White-glove service (whatever that means)! And a list of amenities as long as your arm, including not just a swimming pool but a lazy river—and get this: that lazy river will be in use all year long because the entire campground will sit under a series of humongous, transparent air domes!

Isn’t that beyond awesome?

In its broad strokes, that kind of sales pitch is being repeated from one end of the country to the other. But if the particulars in the previous paragraph resonate especially for you, it’s because you live in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and you’ve been hearing a lot from Ricky Trinidad. New Castle is yet another wan Rust Belt city, 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh and 100 years from its economic heyday, with a poverty level north of 20% and median household income roughly half the U.S. average. Ricky Trinidad is a failed Florida real estate developer who wears his religion on his sleeve and has never built or operated a campground in his life, but who has been assuring New Castle and surrounding Lawrence County that he has the answers to their economic prayers.

Specifically, Trinidad wants to build two small housing developments, The Kingdom Place and Royalty Place, as well as Royalty Camping, a 30-acre campground with approximately 150 RV and tent sites and a dozen “luxury cabins,” plus various sports courts, playgrounds, a large reception and recreation facility—and, of course, that lazy river. All those perks will attract people from across the country, creating a tourism boom for the county, Trinidad has promised. At the same time, the campground won’t be intrusive because, as Trinidad told a local reporter, “we’re going to berm all around it plus a six foot fence. It will be a 25-foot berm, like a hill.”

But that was early days. Even as Trinidad was speaking at public hearings and countering local objections, the germ of an idea that was being planted in New Castle was rapidly blossoming into something much bigger. Something revolutionary. As Royalty Camping proclaims on its recently unveiled website, “We’re changing the RV camping industry.” Exactly how isn’t specified, but apparently a lot of it has to do with putting the entire campground under a transparent dome—or maybe under a series of smaller domes. Whichever. Both concepts are mentioned on the site, but the particulars aren’t important. What’s important is that this innovation will make Royalty Camping “the only campground in the world offering indoor winter camping,” including the whole gamut of normal camping activities, such as BBQ grilling, fire pits, hiking and biking, swimming and so on.

And as the site makes clear, New Castle is just the beginning. A section titled “Locations” identifies seven such in five states, including Colorado, Utah and California, replete with stock photos of people doing fun things in the great outdoors—although no camping facilities actually exist at this time. As Royalty Camping concedes, it’s “in the process of determining several strategic and convenient locations” for a campground in each of these “locations.” But a guy can dream, right?

Trinidad’s vehicle for all this dream-weaving is his latest LLC, called Metrovitalization, born from the ashes of Metronomic LLC, a Florida development company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September of 2020 with more than $87 million in debt. But Metronomic’s financial woes began months before Covid hit, becoming most evident when it stopped making interest payments on a $5.75 million mortgage, starting Dec. 1, 2019, and when it didn’t pay its 2019 property taxes. The bulk of Metronomic’s debts consisted not of mortgages, however, but of $51.3 million in unsecured loans owed to Qidian, a crowdfunding investment platform—an object lesson, perhaps, in the perils of such “investments.” Meanwhile, despite all that money sloshing around, Metronomic completed only one building and lost all 17 of its Florida properties.

Metrovitalization is picking up where Metronomic left off—literally, as its website list of past projects consists largely of architect’s drawings of incomplete Metronomic ventures. Both firms are described by Trinidad as very faith-based, an orientation into which Trinidad has leaned heavily in New Castle. “We believe in Evangelism and the revitalization spiritually of communities,” he told the New Castle News. Indeed, Trinidad added, he had ended up in New Castle after hearing about Jubilee Ministries International, which is led by New Castle-based pastor Dr. Mark Kauffman. His LinkedIn page further asserts that Trinidad “is passionate in sharing the word of God, through practicing living it in all areas of his life, leading Bible study groups and serving in multiple ministries for God.”

That kind of confessional sharing plays well in some quarters, where it justifies overlooking red flags and warning signs that would torpedo a more secular entrepreneur. “He’s a really good Christian guy who is investing in the community,” contended State Rep. Maria Brown, who represents the New Castle area and who recently took down her government Facebook page in response to a flurry of anti-Trinidad comments. The posts, she told New Castle News, made it seem like the developer is “a sketchy, despicable and untrustworthy man” and not the sort of thing she wanted to see on her page.

“Sketchy” in fact may be apt, but Trinidad is plowing ahead nonetheless. Although public hearing comments were all but universally opposed to the campground, citing its disruptive impact, township supervisors have approved a conditional use request—with certain stipulations, such as lengths of stay—and the proposed game-changing campground is now seeking additional county and state permits.

This being a fast-moving and ever-evolving scheme, it’s unclear whether Royalty Camping’s air dome(s) will be perched on top of the 25-foot berm or inside it. Either way, it will be an eye-catching testament to the power of faith.

• Stetler a victim, hustler—or both?
• When con artists become predators
• RV hustlers circle closer to the flame
• Maybe it’s time to rethink s’mores
• The bloom is off the RV camping rose