Flabby use of language dilutes meaning, leads to sloppy thinking and invariably results in undesirable consequences. Consider, for example, the way we say the chief executive of a large corporation “earned” X million dollars. Nobody “earns” a million dollars—never mind $10 million, or ten times that amount—when the median working wage is $56,473. A CEO may be paid that amount, may be rewarded that amount, but to describe this remuneration as “earned” is to rob the word of all relevance.
Something similar is happening in the world of campgrounds and RV parks, where a deliberately sloppy embrace of “camping” has robbed the word of most meaning. One consequence is that affluent people—or people with access to capital—are free to invade rural areas and reshape them to their own liking, despite local efforts to maintain the character of their communities through zoning restrictions, land use plans and other attempts to limit unchecked growth. That tramples both local sensibilities and any meaningful understanding of camping per se.
Exhibit A: Prospect Lake in Egremont, Massachusetts, where developer Ian Rasch has started transforming a tired old 125-site RV park and campground into an affluent playground projected to have 40 high-end cabins, a spa, yoga classes, catered events, private saunas and hot tubs, evening cocktails and an upscale retail outlet. If a similar venture designed by the same architectural firm, Piaule Catskills, is any guide, nightly rates will start at $499 plus taxes and resort fees. This isn’t, in other words, anything like your grandfather’s campground, and even the latest window-dressing name for this sort of luxe indulgence won’t suffice: rather than call his project a “glampground,” Rasch’s documentation refers to it as a “landscape hotel.”
Yet as extensively documented in a 9,000 word article by Bill Shein of the Berkshire Argus, the well-heeled developer seldom utters the words “landscape hotel” in public. When it comes to seeking community approval for his plans, Rasch is all “camp” this and “campground” that, as in, “The campground will continue to operate as a campground but with fewer sites and upgraded amenities.” Which is like saying that a Maserati MC20 is just like your family minivan, but with fewer seats and an upgraded engine and aerodynamics.
As clearly inappropriate as it is, however, the campground label is hugely useful for Rasch or other developers who want to get around zoning restrictions that allow traditional campgrounds but not more overtly commercial enterprises, as in an otherwise residential area. Such end-runs are especially critical for existing campgrounds that predate existing zoning regulations, and therefore operate under grandfathered conditions that vanish if the use changes—as is the case with Prospect Lake. As summarized by Egremont’s board of health director, “What they’re going to be, as opposed to what they were, is going to be so vastly different. I’m thinking this is going to turn into a lodging. . . . It could be a ‘campground,’ but it will be a campground in name only.”
The irony here is that the traditional campground industry has been a key player in creating that confusion—why I referred to this as “deliberately sloppy” semantics. If Rasch wanted to build 40 cabins on his property, there’d be room to argue that he needs the kinds of permits and inspections that any permanent structures require. But because he’s planning to bring in cabins mounted on wheeled chassis, which the RV industry has successfully lobbied to have categorized as park model “recreational vehicles,” the fiction that this is a transient, non-permanent arrangement can be perpetuated with a straight face.
I’ve written repeatedly about the problems associated with the park model scam (here, here and here, for example), but the absurdity of insisting the emperor is fully clothed was summarized most unmistakably by Cynthia Zbierski, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Campground Owners. When Shein referred to park model RVs as being “permanently sited,” she quickly corrected him by observing, without a hint of sardonic self-awareness, “They’re not going to be permanent because they’re on wheels.” Shein, alas, failed to follow up by asking just how many of the scores of park model RVs throughout the state’s 75 or so campgrounds have ever been moved from their initial placements.
The upshot, thanks to such muddied semantics, is that Rasch can tell Egremont he’s just fixing up a dilapidated campground—even as he markets the same property as a “landscape hotel” to an upscale clientele that thinks a thousand bucks a person for a weekend stay “should cost way more.” He can get away with that misrepresentation because the campground industry has lost sight of its core business, turning a blind eye to its bougie competitors. And Massachusetts now has 125 fewer RV sites, even though there’s been no change in its overall campground census.
Renting Dirt 