Tag: Blue Water Development

A handful of updates on past posts

The end of July marks the mid-point of the traditional camping season, although that term has become increasingly elastic and even meaningless due to the distorting effects of climate change. Nevertheless, this seems like an apt moment to hit “pause,” check back on what I’ve written in the past and provide updates where appropriate. Some stories actually do reach a resolution, but many more have a way of continuing with no clear end in sight.

Ghost Town in the Sky just won’t die

One such ongoing drama has to do with Ghost Town in the Sky, a now defunct amusement park in Maggie Valley, NC about which I last wrote nearly two years ago. The property’s greatest champion, Alaska Presley, had entered into a business partnership with a Myrtle Beach-based hustler, Frankie Wood, who sweet-talked her into naming him the managing partner of their joint venture despite his shady past. In addition to contributing the property itself, Presley apparently covered all of the venture’s operating costs; Wood’s end of the deal amounted to little more than half-baked ideas drizzled with snake oil.

Then Presley died, age 98.

Inheriting Presley’s 50% stake in the partnership was her niece, Jill McClure, who cast a notably more business-like eye on its affairs. It didn’t take her long to conclude she was holding one end of a snake—and not the business end of it, either. The upshot was a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the partnership, filed in North Carolina’s Superior Court, alleging that Wood had breached his fiduciary responsibilities and thus was putting McClure’s interests at risk. Given Wood’s history to date, that would have seemed like a slam dunk.

But no. Ruling more than 18 months after the case was filed—in part because of numerous filing extensions requested by Wood, earning a judicial rebuke for “litigation by ambush” that nevertheless had no effect on the final decision—Special Superior Court Judge for Complex Business Cases Adam M. Conrad concluded in mid-May that McClure didn’t have a case. The legal arrangement to which Presley had agreed, and which McClure had inherited, clearly specified that Wood “is the sole managing member of Ghost Town in the Sky and that it has unilateral authority under the operating agreement to manage the company’s day-to-day affairs without McClure’s consent.”

That “management,” as the decision also observes, includes four years in which the venture “did not secure financing, earn income or hire employees.” Since Presley’s death, it also includes non-payment of 2022 and 2023 property taxes. No matter. As Judge Conrad sees it, there is nothing extreme enough to merit an involuntary dissolution of the partnership—which leaves Wood still at the helm, Ghost Town in the Sky even more of a moldering heap than it was four years ago, and McClure gamely telling a local reporter, “I’m moving forward with a positive attitude.”

Stay tuned.

Cacapon locals knock out two RV parks

While Maggie Valley refuses to give up the ghost, a two-fisted attempt to put an RV park in or next to Cacapon State Park, West Virginia, finally appears to have been defeated.

The first such effort, as I wrote a year ago, featured an overly cozy relationship between state officials and Blue Water Development and their efforts to build an RV campground with more than 300 sites in the state park. The proposal quickly generated fierce local opposition from park advocates and local residents, who objected to its size and the amount of traffic it would generate in a rugged area notable for its narrow roads and rustic vibe. As more details emerged of Blue Water’s backdoor maneuvering, the whole idea became politically untenable and ended up getting axed.

But that only made way for a competing proposal that had already been floated as an alternative to the state facility: a 50-acre private development adjacent to Cacapon State Park, with up to 241 sites for RVs, cabins, yurts and tents, as well as such mega-park amenities as a swimming pool, bathhouse, mini golf course, sports courts, dog parks, several pavilions and food truck areas. Ironically, as local opponents worried that the “oversized RV campground” would scar a panoramic viewshed rated by National Geographic Magazine as “one of the top 5 scenic views in the East,” the developer of the proposed campground was . . . Scenic LLC.

Despite boisterous public hearings that divided the Morgan County Planning Commission, all needed permits were approved and Scenic LLC seemed set to proceed. But then the months rolled by and nothing seemed to be happening, encouraging the opposition to renew its battle. In late June, more than two dozen local residents showed up at a planning commission meeting to demand a reconsideration, with some accusing commissioners of “selling out” the community and the commissioners responding that the project had met all county guidelines for commercial development, so what else could they do.

And then, just like that, it was over. Two weeks ago, Aaron Bills, Scenic’s principal owner, announced that he is stepping away from the project. The plan had been to seek a KOA franchise for the property, but apparently the price tag was too steep. This is “shockingly bad timing for finances,” Bills told county officials, according to the Morgan Messenger. “As a family, we’ve decided we can’t deliver on a KOA-branded campground”–indeed, he added, would the county be interested in buying the property for itself?

Danville’s casino-related RV park craps out

A 333-site Roman-themed RV park in Danville, VA, proposed last year by  J. Cubas Holdings of Coral Gables, Florida—which, not incidentally, has absolutely no experience in operating an RV park of any size, much less an avowed “high end” operation—is no more.

After the neighbors rose up in arms for any number of obvious reasons, Cubas switched gears and said early this year he’d build a bunch of new homes, priced between $300,000 and $350,000. Ironically, he’d held that out as a threat against the city if it refused to permit his RV park—only to have the city elders say that more housing is exactly what Danville needs. “Folks moving here, they need somewhere to live and there’s only so many places you can build new developments, so we’re happy to have this moving forward,” explained city councilman Lee Vogler.

Plus here’s another bonus: putting the kibbosh on Cubas’ “Palace Resort” also deep-sixed his plans for an annual biker rally that he promised would rival those of Sturgis, SD and Orlando, FL.

Reservation software getting regulatory stink-eye

As public officials learn about the price-fixing potential of algorithms used by centralized reservation software systems, first extensively detailed by ProPublica two years ago, they’ve started erecting legislative constraints at the national level. Now that’s filtered down to the local precincts: yesterday, the San Francisco board of supervisors adopted the country’s first local ordinance banning landlords from using certain software to set rents.

According to CBS News, the measure bans the sale and use of software “which combines non-public competitors’ data to set, recommend or advise on rents and occupancy levels.” Doing so, said the ordinance’s sponsor, amounts to “automated price-fixing.”

Yes, that’s only one city, and a decidedly liberal one at that. And yes, the ordinance applies to rental apartments only. But it’s not much of a leap to see how the same concerns can apply to widely shared campground reservation systems, like CampSpot, which aggregate user data and enable “individual campground owners to compare their metrics, such as average daily rates, occupancy rates and revenue per available site, with what everyone else is doing—and to make adjustments as desired.”

Sooner or later, the anti-trust police may take notice.

Frank Rolfe is at it again—but badly

Finally, scarcely more than two months after an email blast soliciting customers for his misleadingly titled RV Park University, Frank Rolfe is at it again, still hyping his “RV Park Investor’s Boot Camp.” This broadside, like the previous one, touts his 30 years of experience “building one of the largest portfolios in the U.S.”—experience that can be yours for only $997. “That’s for roughly 20 hours of video,” he writes. “And that’s a true bargain investment in your education on this sector.”

Okay. Pretty standard Frank Rolfe fare thus far. But embedded in the email is a link to a video that’s supposed to seal the deal, “Unlock RV Park Investment Success,” under the equally problematic headline, “The RV Park Boot Camp Is The Gold-Standard.” The first half of the two-minute video is Frank giving his sales pitch. The second half, without anything resembling an introduction, apparently is supposed to highlight one of Frank’s investment successes: the Mission Bell-Trade Winds RV and Mobile Home Resort, deep in the heart of Texas.

This is, as you might glean from the name, not an RV park but a long-term residential mixed-use development catering to retirees (“Homeownership Made Affordable”) and snowbirds. The residents, by all accounts, are a cheerful and welcoming bunch. The place itself is a dump, showing its age and in a generally run-down condition. Its website, where the only items under “news” urges readers to check out “the exciting events of the 2022-2023 season,” is just as outdated.

Judging by this example, Frank’s boot camp deserves the boot.

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Cacapon RV park booted—for now

Just days after a court challenge successfully blocked a public hearing into a West Virginia proposal to build an RV campground at Cacapon State Park, the state has decided to shelve the idea altogether—for now. The about-face comes in the wake of growing weekly protests from area residents and park supporters, angered by the state’s announced goal of making the campground a profit center, and by the proposals it attracted, including one for a major facility of 350 RV sites and numerous recreational amenities.

The decision was disclosed yesterday by a state senator representing the area and rejects all three proposals that had been submitted by the March 1 deadline, marking a significant setback for Blue Water Development, which has been chasing the project for at least 18 months. As reported this past week by Morgan County USA, an online news outlet based in the state’s eastern panhandle, the Ocean City, MD-based developer was pursuing the idea of a large RV park at Cacapon at least as far back as September, 2021—six months before the state legislature approved an eleventh-hour bill that opened the door to commercial development of state lands.

“Attached is a draft concept for the RV Park at Cacapon we did for Bluewater (Blue Water),” a civil engineer wrote in an email on Sept. 28, 2021 to Steven McDaniel, then the head of the state’s Division of Natural Resources, as reported by Morgan County USA. “They wanted us to pass it along to you and see if this area still works and what the next steps would be.” The draft concept called for an RV campground of more than 300 sites, to be developed behind the park’s Nature Center.

Last June, less than three months after the legislature created Blue Water’s opportunity to get into Cacapon, company CEO Todd Burbage told Mike Gast, then an editor with the online magazine RVtravel, that a lot of state and federal parks were in dire need of infrastructure improvements—and by “infrastructure” he wasn’t talking about roads or bridges or even wifi, which is how most people would define the term. Gast, no slouch, apparently picked up on the inference. “Would Blue Water be in the market for taking over and running some national park campgrounds or state park campgrounds?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Burbage eagerly replied. “We’re actually in high level talks with one of the mid-Atlantic states right now. They’re actually being wildly helpful with us.” Although Burbage acknowledged that government does a good job of protecting “beautiful parcels of land,” he added that “when it comes to providing services along the level of what you and I expect, they just don’t have the expertise in it.”

Asked about that exchange earlier this month, Burbage insisted he’d had “zero communication” with West Virginia’s elected officials about Cacapon. Yet there’s no question that Blue Water was primed and ready to go when the Cacopon request for proposals (RFP) was issued last December—indeed, Blue Water was the only applicant from beyond the panhandle, raising a question of how widely the state had advertised its RFP. Moreover, one of the two other “proposals” came from a nearby competing RV campground that’s still being developed and which amounted to a request that the Cacapon venture be deep-sixed. The third proposal, meanwhile, came from a campground operator with no development experience and on its face failed to meet the state’s minimum requirements.

While Burbage has danced around the issue of his company’s behind-the-scenes machinations, the Blue Water proposal in fact included a 350-site campground near the Nature Center—just as described in the 2021 email. And while the proposal also included a 240-site alternative in a different part of the park, neither suggestion went down well with local residents who treasure Cacapon’s rugged beauty and more rustic vibe. “The theme-park style proposal from RV campground developer Blue Water is obviously a successful model for their private enterprise,” editorialized the weekly newspaper Morgan Messenger. “It just doesn’t fit inside Cacapon State Park.”

While Morgan County USA chipped away at the good ol’ boy relationship between Blue Water and state park officials, local residents and park supporters became increasingly outspoken in their opposition. An initial meeting March 27 to protest Blue Water’s ambitions drew a crowd of 70 or so, which grew to approximately 90 at an April 3 rally and more than 120 on April 10. Even more were expected for the April 18 hearing, before a court order cancelled it, and yesterday’s announcement that the Division of Natural Resources was rejecting all three RFPs suggests that the campground idea is dead. Unless, of course, it gets resurrected down the road.

For now, however, the division has decided to do what it should have done from the outset: listen to its constituents. An online survey, open for 30 days, asks respondents to provide their ideas for “camping or additional recreational amenities,” both throughout the state and at Cacapon specifically. Those who complete the 10-minute survey will be entered in a random drawing for a free, two-night stay at the state campground of the winner’s choosing. The division, meanwhile, promises to “consider future projects in light of the public comments received.”

Color me skeptical, given all the influence-peddling history here, but at least it’s a nod in the right direction.

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Home sweet . . . shipping container?

It’s gotten to the point where the notion of a “campground” is becoming indistinguishable from that of a subdivision. True, the housing units at so-called campgrounds and RV parks are—mostly— smaller than their suburban counterparts. And their settings may be more “rustic,” perhaps with gravel roads instead of asphalt, and with such camping flourishes as outdoor fire pits or communal swimming pools. But commercial camp sites, whether for RVs or dwellings, also tend to be more closely packed together than the houses in most subdivisions, and the inexplicable fondness of many campers for lighting up their sites means starry nights at a campground will be as elusive as in any Levittown.

What brings this to mind is a couple of news items April 7 in RV Business, an online industry magazine, that illustrate the ever-widening definition of what constitutes an acceptable campgound rental unit. The first announced the “successful splash test” of something called a Bungalow Boat, developed by a sister company of Blue Water, an aggressively expanding developer and manager of RV parks and marinas. The Bungalow Boat is little more than a cabin on pontoons, suitable only for being moored in calm water, but is being promoted as “a true glamping experience”—which is to say, as an overpriced shelter that will make money only as long as “campers” are convinced they’re paying for an unusually authentic experience.

The other RV Business article that caught my attention breathlessly introduced something called the Gateway Park Model RV, manufactured by ekō Solutions LLC, “specializing in state-of-the-art eco-friendly dwellings.” Its faux Scandinavian name notwithstanding, ekō is headquartered just outside of Indianapolis; its eco-friendly dwellings are repurposed shipping containers.

There’s nothing wrong—indeed, it’s quite possibly praiseworthy—to take a 20-foot-long shipping container that has outlived its initial function and rework it into a habitable space. But it may be a stretch to label the result as “perfect for the tiny home lover or on-the-go camper who wants the amenities of a home away from home,” which is a lot to lay on a metal box that at 160 square feet is smaller than most travel trailers and easily twice as heavy. “On-the-go” possibly, but not easily. Perhaps there’s a market for these on the West Coast, where cities are scrambling for low-cost housing to shelter a growing army of the homeless, but to call them “park model RVs” suggests that ekō Solutions has a more upscale market in mind.

Recycled “camping” at its finest: the Gateway Park Model RV. Ah, nature!

Meanwhile, the more conventional park model industry is rolling along quite nicely, even as traditional RV manufacturers have seen production plunge 50% from year-earlier levels. As Dick Grymonprez, director of park model sales at one of the country’s biggest park model manufacturers, Champion Home Builders, told Woodall’s Campground Magazine last month, business for the segment is up 15% this year, driven in part by the continued building and acquisition of campgrounds by industry heavyweights like Sun Communities, Cove and Equity Lifestyles. “All the big community owners are growing their RV portfolios and putting in RV parks, so they need rentals. And they’re buying park models for rentals,” he explained.

Park models are the Trojan horses of the campground industry (as I’ve written before, here and here), a way of smuggling small houses onto properties that ostensibly were built for the more transient pastime of camping—a blurring of the line between residential and recreational communities. Layer on the upselling phenomenon of glamping, from bungalow boats to tricked-out safari tents, domes, yurts, treehouses, prairie schooners, teepees, Hobbit houses and other fantastical dwellings, and all of a sudden the RV nomads of yore find themselves boxed out and hemmed in by the new urban settlers.

It won’t take much more of this before a lot of prospective RV buyers will suddenly realize they don’t have to make a 10- or 15-year investment to go “camping” when campgrounds are providing such alternatives. True, on a per-night basis a park model or glamping unit will cost significantly more than an RV site, but for anyone not looking to be an RVing full-timer, the overall cost favors traveling by car and staying at what amounts to a decentralized hotel room disguised as something else. In this way, campground owners may already be stealing business from RV manufacturers, who in any case have done themselves no favors with their years of shoddy workmanship.

So look for still more variations on the theme, more innovative ways to put walls and a roof around beds and bathrooms while marketing the result as an unprecedented wow! way to go “camping.” Eventually all the combinations and permutations will be exhausted and the public, wowed no longer, will move on, the campgrounds they leave behind looking like those mining towns that became overrun with tumbleweeds once the ore played out.

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John Denver, rolling over in his grave

You might think that a state’s Division of Natural Resources would be devoted to clean air, clean water and sustainable outdoor recreation. But what do you suppose such an agency will emphasize when it’s an offshoot of that state’s Department of Commerce? West Virginia’s Division of Natural Resources won’t leave you guessing: it’s all about the money.

Last March, just an hour before adjourning for the year, West Virginia’s legislature enacted a law that for the first time opens virtually all state land to commercial development, empowering the director of the Natural Resources Division to enter into third-party contracts to build and operate recreational facilities in all state forests and all but one state park. Passage came despite objections that the law gives the director too much power, that it could reduce the affordability of state parks and that it could result in the development of casinos, racetracks and other outsized attractions at odds with the parks’ nature-based appeal.

Pish-posh, replied the bill’s supporters. State law has numerous provisions requiring the protection of “natural areas,” as anyone driving through the state’s coal-mining regions can attest.

By last December, it was clear that someone wasn’t wasting any time. Meeting with state legislators during their interim session, Acting Commerce Secretary James Bailey could confidently assert that plans for “a very large campground” were in the works. But precisely which park was being targeted Bailey wouldn’t say, even when asked directly by Delegate Ruth Rowan if it was Cacapon Resort State Park. Nor would he confirm or deny that such a campground would have to include at least 100 sites to be profitable, despite Rowan’s insistence that anything bigger than 50 or 60 sites would raise concerns about overcrowding.

Just days later, however, Rowan got her answer. Cacapon was indeed the targeted park. And even 100 sites seem unlikely.

For those unfamiliar with the area, Cacapon Resort State Park is approximately nine miles from Berkeley Springs and in easy proximity to the Washington-Baltimore megaplex. As a recreational facility it dates back to 1933, when the Civilian Conservation Corps built an 11-room log inn and a dam to create a small lake. These days, however, it has been recast as a “full-service, four-season resort,” a 6,600-acre expanse that includes a recently constructed 74-room lodge and conference center, an additional, recently renovated 46-room lodge, 31 vacation cabins and a 12-room inn, plus a slew of recreational amenities that include a full spa, championship golf course and a comprehensive set of mountain biking trails.

With all that, however, Cacapon has no facilities for campers to park their Winnebagos, Prevosts and Airstreams— creating a “unique business opportunity,” as the state helpfully pointed out in the request for proposals (RFP) it issued in mid-December. So unique, in fact, that the state has no idea what it actually wants. As the RFP makes clear, basically anything goes: where in the park such a campground should be located, how big it should be, what amenities it should provide—nothing is out of bounds, as long as it provides “the highest possible return on investment.”

Yet despite such a blank slate, only three proposals were submitted by the March 1 deadline—although a more diverse set of ideas is hard to imagine

On the modest end of the scale, and clearly most responsive to Delegate Rowan’s concerns about overcrowding, is a proposal from River & Trail Outfitters of Harpers Ferry to build just 50 RV sites, with gravel roads, plus a few additional amenities, such as an airsoft course. Yet of the three applicants River & Trails has the thinnest resume, apparently limited to operating a small city-owned campground in nearby Brunswick, despite the RFP’s requirement that applicants have designed, constructed and operated a minimum of five major campgrounds.

Then there’s Blue Water Development Corp., the very antithesis of River & Trail Outfitters. Growing by leaps and bounds over the past two decades, Blue Water owns and manages campgrounds, marinas and other outdoor recreational facilities up and down the East Coast and out to Texas, Colorado and other points west. The ambitious size of its growing portfolio is matched only by the size of its properties: these are not mom-and-pop operators. So it’s not surprising that its glossy submission calls for an “RV Resort” at either one of two different locations in Cacapon—one with 240 sites, the other with 350—each with an amenity “core” that would include a pool, water slides, cornhole, pickleball courts and golf car rentals. Not enough? There’s also a supplemental proposal for an “amenity area” that would include a lakeside beach, fishing piers, more water slides, a kayak dock and something called an “Aquabana.”

And, finally, there’s the “proposal” submitted by Scenic LLC, which opens with an apology before suggesting that West Virginia forget the whole idea of a campground in Cacapon. It turns out that for the past three years Scenic has been developing plans for its very own campground—a “market-leading, future-oriented RV campground”—on 400 acres that are “technically adjacent” to Cacapon State Park. And while it had not yet chatted with the state park system about its plans, “high-level planning briefs” had been conducted with a state senator, other state officials and the cabinet secretary of tourism. The left hand, apparently, did not know what the right hand was doing.

Too polite—or politically savvy—to point out that West Virginia’s government was putting its muscle behind a competing private sector venture, Scenic LLC nevertheless suggested that the state refrain from building any campground at Cacapon and instead consider a revenue-sharing “collaborative relationship.” As it further noted, “We believe this approach will be faster, more predictable, much less disruptive, and have a greater likelihood of success than a ‘design/build’ project within the boundaries of the park.” Oh, and as it happens, the campground that Scenic LLC is planning will be a KOA franchise, which it views as a plus—indeed, the bulk of its RFP is devoted to replicating KOA materials.

How all this will shake out is still anyone’s guess, but it’s the possibility of a 350-site campground that has local residents and park supporters most riled up. More than 70 of them met at the park’s upper lake last Monday to protest Blue Water’s proposal, and have vowed to keep meeting each Monday until an April 18 public hearing on the proposal. Given the state’s expressed desire to have Cacapon become “a major profit center,” however, Blue Water would seem to have the inside rail in this horse race: River and Trails Outfitters’ proposal is too small, even if it is more in keeping with a state park vibe. And Scenic LLC’s “collaborative relationship” translates into a 5% proposed revenue-sharing contribution, which on top of the additional 10% of revenues it will need to fork over to KOA, won’t leave it with a whole lot of wiggle room..

The West Virginia Department of Commerce, you can be sure, has much loftier ambitions than five cents on the dollar.

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The bogus nature of park models

A legal squabble in Currituck County, North Carolina, is exposing one of the camping industry’s biggest con jobs: the persistent claim that “park models” are just regular RVs.

A park model, as RVers who camp at commercial campgrounds probably know, is basically a cabin built on a single trailer chassis. Federal rules restrict them to less than 400 square feet, but they can be as much as 14′ wide, which neutral observers might conclude stretches the definition of “vehicle.” Indeed, like their larger mobile home or house trailer counterparts, park models usually require a special permit to be moved and usually need specialized towing equipment. Like house trailers, they usually don’t have holding tanks and so need direct water and sewer hookups for their plumbing. And like house trailers, once they’ve been set up they’re usually there to stay, wheels and axles removed and the undercarriages surrounded by skirting.

Park models, in other words, might appear to have a lot more in common with the manufactured housing found in trailer courts than with RVs. From a regulatory perspective, in fact, the only critical difference is the square-foot limitation: more than 400 square feet and the wheeled house is defined as a dwelling, subject to Housing and Urban Development regulations. Less than 400 square feet and the wheeled house is defined as “a trailer-type RV that is designed to provide temporary accommodations for recreation, camping or seasonal use,” removing it from under HUD’s regulatory umbrella and putting it under the arguably less stringent manufacturing standards of something called ANSI A-119.5.

That standard dates back to 1982, when the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, the trade group representing RV manufacturers, sought to draw a bright line between “vehicles” and “dwellings” to forestall greater regulatory oversight of the RVs it was building. Over time, however, RVIA has steadily enlarged the scope of ANSI permissibility. In 1997, for example, it persuaded HUD to exempt “small lofts” from the square-foot calculation–and in the years since, the small lofts have grown bigger and taller, and now range up to five feet high. More recently, the industry also won the right to exempt porches built on the chassis from the same square footage limitation, opening the door for even bigger chassis footprints.

Still, even as park models grow more and more indistinguishable from mobile homes, the industry superficially maintains the fiction that park models are intended only for part-time recreational use. “Superficially” because even though that’s the official line, the real-world reality is that park models are touted as low-cost housing “perfect for retired seniors and couples just starting life,” according to one sales brochure, which optimistically adds that they’re “built to last 30-50 years or more with minimal maintenance.”

Or consider the representations of an outfit called Platinum Cottages, which claims that “while they are referred to as RVs and mobile homes, park model homes are built more robustly than their competitors and have more creature comforts that closely resemble traditional homes. They can be used for a variety of different things, from temporary living to permanent living quarters.” Indeed–and there are people all around the country doing just that, living year-round in park models parked in campgrounds and in mobile home parks and in some cases on private land.

It’s also why Currituck County, where Blue Water Development bought an existing campground four years ago, is having a problem. Having rebranded the property as the KOA Outer Banks West campground and then deciding it wasn’t entirely happy with its acquisition (don’t these people do any prior due diligence?), Blue Water soon went to court over the county’s land use restrictions–already in place several years when it bought the property–so it could add 80 RV sites, a swimming pool and other facilities. It lost that battle last summer, when the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled that no, the county rules would stand.

Undaunted, Blue Water is back in court again, this time over new campground rules that the county adopted this past February–rules, ironically, that to some extent ease the earlier restrictions. Raising Blue Water’s ire, however, is a provision that would limit RVs to vehicles no more than 8.5-feet wide “in the transport mode.” Which is to say, no park models, which the county contends look more like manufactured homes than RVs.

Blue Water, which has 21 park models 10 to 14 feet wide at the KOA, is aghast. “The park model RVs clearly are not manufactured homes,” the lawsuit asserts, further contending that it “creates an unfair competitive advantage” for campgrounds in nearby counties that don’t have the same restrictions. Indeed, says Blue Water, the new law could put it out of business altogether, and just as the season is picking up. Currituck County’s new rules are nothing less than an existential threat that means campgrounds will “cease to exist.”

Hyperbolic? No doubt, but it will be interesting to see how Blue Water advances its claim that park model RVs “clearly” are not manufactured homes. Yes, it can be counted on to stress the difference between ANSI and HUD certification, and that might be enough to make the legal point. But the reality is that this is an increasingly arbitrary and meaningless distinction for an ANSI standard that no longer passes the smell test–if it ever did. If Carrituck County doesn’t make its case with a legal argument, it should prevail on the facts: park models do in fact look more like a manufactured home than an RV.

Time to get real.

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Slots, RV park avenge war, smallpox

The Pequots, once the dominant Native American tribe in eastern Connecticut, were just about exterminated by colonialists more than 350 years ago. A 1663 smallpox epidemic wiped out as much as 80% of a population estimated at 16,000. A five-year war that began the following year killed off half of the survivors, with the balance scattered so far and wide that a Pequot reservation created in 1666–the country’s first–had only 13 residents recorded in the 1910 U.S. census.

How times have changed!

Following creation of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe in 1975 by a handful of the tribe’s descendants, the federal government in 1983 resolved a legal claim that some of the reservation land had been stolen by formally recognizing the tribe as a sovereign entity. Three years later, the Pequots–empowered by that sovereign status–opened a bingo hall, and over the next six years generated enough income to build a casino. And then they built a lot of other stuff, and still more stuff–so much, in fact, that by 2012 they were teetering on the edge of insolvency because of the $2 billion debt they had accumulated along the way.

Again: how times have changed!

This year, celebrating its 30th anniversary, Foxwoods is the largest resort casino in the Northeast, its 340,000 square feet of casino floor space more than doubling that of its largest Atlantic City rival, the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa. Located in the sweet-spot halfway between Boston and New York City, it pulls in almost 13 million visitors a year, who come not only for the gambling but for the reservation’s 80-store Tanger Outlet Mall, three hotels, two theaters, five event spaces, a couple of spas and a golf course.

But–as they say–that’s not all! The tribe announced this week that it has sealed a deal with Chicago-based Great Wolf Lodge to build a resort, adjacent to the casino, that will include 550 hotel rooms, a 90,000-square-foot indoor water park, an outdoor pool, a family play area and an interactive adventure park. The $300 million facility is slated to open in 2024 and will “redefine what being a resort destination means,” according to Foxwoods president Jason Guyot.

And then, of course, there’s the ongoing effort by Blue Water Development Corp. to build a $25 million RV resort on 65 acres that belong to the tribe, midway between the casino and the hamlet of Preston, population 4,788. The RV resort has met vocal opposition from local residents, partly because it abuts a pond that they contend is environmentally fragile, partly because it pushes the whole Foxwoods complex deeper into an otherwise rural community. A series of planning and zoning commission hearings and meetings, as well as parallel review by the state’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission, are ongoing and have resulted in some modifications, but this still is no minor project: 280 campsites, a welcome center, three bathhouses and a swimming pool, as well as tennis, volleyball, squash and bocce courts.

Final decisions on the RV park are expected in April, and approval seems likely. As summarized in a recent New York Post article, “Big money talks, so nature walks: along with restaurant and hotel taxes, and employment, Foxwoods added more than $4 billion in slot revenue to state coffers over three decades,” which buys an awful lot of influence.

Or payback, 450 years after the fact, using the one weapon that the white man understands best. Forget the guns and germs; it’s greenbacks that win the day.

Next post: Lost in the shuffle of recent history is the fact that the Pequots used a chunk of early gambling revenue to build a $193 million museum, near but behind the casino, dedicated to eastern North American tribes. A quarter-of-a-century later, this nod to heritage attracts fewer visitors in a year than the casino averages per day. Perhaps the Pequots could borrow a leaf from the new Hawaiian playbook, where native peoples are rethinking tourism?