Tag: Clear Sky Resorts

Bubble, bubble, glamping trouble

The glamping industry’s propensity to over-reach, an affliction from which not even the biggest corporate players are immune, currently is on vivid display in the Maine town of Lamoine. What started as an overly ambitious proposal to build a subdivision of geodesic domes has galvanized so much local opposition that the town is now considering a six-month moratorium on any new lodging—and conceivably could kill the proposal altogether. If that happens, call it death by hubris.

The offender in this case is Clear Sky Resort, an Arizona-based developer that wants to plop scores of plastic bubbles on a coastal stretch of Maine, the use of which could be purchased for several hundred dollars a night per bubble. All that must have seemed quite reasonable from a distance of 2,000 miles, but for some significant percentage of the 1,800 or so residents of Lamoine, none of whom would get a piece of the action, it sounded more like an invitation for a whole lot of strangers to come parading through town, trampling the coastal wetlands and disrupting the quiet that locals have treasured. People started talking. Petitions were drafted. Lawyers were hired.

And before you know it, things started unraveling. Although Clear Sky initially secured a conditional go-ahead from the local planning board, the opposition soon discovered that Clear Sky hadn’t bothered to apply for permits required to disturb coastal wetlands—a prerequisite for seeking the planning board’s consideration. Having put the cart ahead of the horse, Clear Water also had run out the clock on meeting certain purchase obligations, and therefore couldn’t demonstrate that it actually owns the land it wants to develop—another prerequisite for local review, not to mention evidence of an alarming lack of attention to detail.

And then, just to cap it all, the entire grand scheme provoked so much opposition that the town now is contemplating a six-month moratorium while Lamoine’s residents and officials review town ordinances with an eye toward aligning them more closely with the town’s 2020 comprehensive plan. That plan, a 145-page document, stresses the area’s rural nature and its residents’ desire to encourage small businesses and home occupations. It most definitely frowns on large tourist accommodations, calling for the prohibition of hotels and motels in rural and agricultural zones—which is to say, anywhere outside of the town core. And compliance with its vision almost certainly will put an end to Clear Sky’s ambitions in the area.

Derailing Clear Sky’s plans might have seemed improbable even a few years ago, when tourism development was widely welcomed as an economic shot in the arm by many struggling rural communities. More recently, however, the growing scale and intensity of RV parks and glampgrounds have disrupted the very attractions their promoters claim to be enshrining. And just as extractive industries like mining and lumbering siphon away an area’s riches while returning little to local residents, the new megaparks—with their restaurants and recreational amenities—capture most of the spending their visitors generate.

Small wonder, then, that more communities are calling a time-out while they wrestle with an unexpected inflow of disruptive investment capital. A six-month moratorium similar to the one Lamoine is considering was adopted in nearby Tremont a couple of years ago, prompted by a proposal for a 154-site “luxury campground”; the result was strict new standards for future campground developments, including size restrictions and spacing requirements. A long-running—and largely bogus—attempt to revive a failed amusement park and associated RV facilities in Maggie Valley, N.C. resulted in a political maelstrom two years ago and a subsequent six-month moratorium while the town developed a “smart growth” set of guidelines.

Other towns and counties are likewise recognizing that their ordinances and zoning regulations have not kept pace with a rapidly changing campground industry. The idea of a rustic natural setting for a few dozen campground trailers, providing families with a couple of days to enjoy fresh air and a natural vibe, has become laughably quaint. Even the initial “glamping” push, in which a traditional campground would be augmented by a handful of yurts or safari tents equipped with beds and minimal furnishings, has morphed into upscale villages of plush accommodations that really amount to nothing more than canvas-sided dispersed resort rooms—yet all still regulated by decades-old rules that never contemplated the creation of such instant subdivisions.

It’s against that backdrop that Lamoine’s residents will be attending a public hearing August 1 to discuss the proposed moratorium, followed by a vote on Aug. 15. Passage of the moratorium is not assured, but given Clear Sky’s missteps to this point, I wouldn’t want to bet against the irate local residents who are marshaling the “yes” vote.

Aug. 17 update: The moratorium was approved two nights ago by the overwhelming vote of 397-2. See here (end of post) for a brief summary.

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KOA amps up the camping con game

One of the KOA-Terramor glamping “tents” in Bar Harbor, Maine. Behind the wooden wall at the head of the bed is a shower with dual shower heads and a ceramic floor.

It’s mid-winter in New York, but the temperature was unseasonably hot when the Saugerties town planning board held a public hearing last week on a KOA-proposed 75-site glamping resort. Approximately 200 local residents turned out Jan. 17 and hooted their approval as a score of speakers—and one mischievous singer—detailed the many reasons why this is a deplorable idea. But while not a single business owner, politician or civic booster rose in defense of the project, KOA showed no sign of backing down, either, demonstrating yet again how far it’s departed from its folksy origins and how oblivious it has become to public opinion.

The Saugerties venture is KOA’s second attempt to diversify into the high-dollar end of the campground business, following an initial foray in Bar Harbor, Maine. That first effort converted a conventional KOA into a glampground under the Terramor nameplate, but while repurposing an existing campground avoided some troublesome issues, it created others. So, on its second go-round, KOA decided to find an undeveloped piece of land on which it could start with a clean slate. It settled on a 77-acre site between Woodstock and Saugerties. And then its problems began.

While initially slow to take notice and build support, the anti-Terramor movement in recent months has gained both momentum and sophistication. Fund-raising to hire scientific and legal talent by now has generated nearly $40,000. The group’s online presence is rich with documentation and resource materials. And its arguments are becoming more refined, homing in on what may be the project’s greatest weakness: an unyielding terrain.

“I think the real surprise for Terramor was not the neighbors. I think the surprise was that the blank canvas they purchased was on bedrock that made septic impossible, contained wetlands that made wastewater difficult to release and included an endangered species that needed a protected habitat,” said Susan Paynter, a leader of the local opposition. “The neighbors are the least of their problems.”

While all that is daunting enough, another argument still shaping up in Saugerties has more widespread implications: that all this talk about “glamping” is ultimately deceitful. That to describe a project as having “campsites” occupied by “temporary structures,” as KOA has done in its presentations, is at best disingenuous when those “temporary structures” have 600-square-foot footprints and are erected on wooden platforms with plumbing and electricity. The Terramor “tents,” while superficially qualifying for that label because the outer shell is canvas, have wooden interior walls, ceramic-floored showers with twin shower heads and, in some cases, a second bedroom in which to stick the kids.

In that respect, glamping “tents” are another aspect of the industry’s efforts, similar to its embrace of park model RVs, to push the limits on what kinds of dwellings it can erect with minimal tax and regulatory liabilities. “Temporary” structures—one because it has a canvas shell, the other because it still has wheels attached to its chassis—in most jurisdictions aren’t subject to real estate taxes. They don’t have to conform to zoning restrictions that would apply to fixed structures, and they don’t have to meet HUD or other housing regulations. And while glamping tents are less durable than park models, they can be larger (park models are limited to 14-foot widths and 400 square feet), are substantially cheaper and can be more readily tarted up as glamorous camping accommodations.

And for now, at least, they can charge novelty prices of $300 and up per night.

That lure is so great that the glamping silliness has exploded. Even as it battles the Saugerties crowd, KOA is simultaneously developing a third Terramor resort, also in New York, and this time it’s reverting to its original approach of converting a former KOA campground. The Lake Placid/White Face Mountain KOA in Wilmington, closed for the season in October, is now being “moved up the road” 2.4 miles, according to KOA, and will reopen in the spring—albeit with fewer than half as many sites. Meanwhile the former site, on Fox Farm Road, is being repurposed as a Terramor Outdoor Resort, with 80 glamping sites, a main lodge with a restaurant, a pool, pavilion, wellness cabin and staff housing.

The Wilmington plans, it should be noted, call for glamping sites that “will consist of both insulated tents and ‘hard-sided’ units,” which the design narrative explains are “to resemble a tent, but with walls and a roof” so they can be used in winter. In other words, ersatz tents of up to 900 square feet—hard-sided “tents” imitating “glamping tents” imitating the kind of tents that you can buy at REI, in a regressive progression whose next step can be nothing less than a motel shaded by a large piece of canvas strung from a series of telephone poles.

Meanwhile, underscoring that this is not just KOA running amok, its Bar Harbor Terramor Resort may be about to get some competition across the bay, in nearby Lamoine. Clear Sky Resorts, a glamping outfit based in Arizona, wants planning board approval for a 90-site “dome glamping camp” with an onsite restaurant, pool, spa, wedding venue and employee housing, but town officials kicked back its application earlier this month, saying it provided incomplete information about water and sewer use. Clear Sky supposedly will be back Feb. 6 with a second effort.

As with KOA’s “tents,” the camping domes Clear Sky wants to erect are huge—660 square feet—and an additional 13 domes intended for staff lodging, wedding venues, a restaurant and other uses presumably will be even larger.

Back in Saugerties, local residents are pushing the planning board to request a State Environmental Quality Review Act assessment from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation—an outcome that could result in KOA having to prepare a draft environmental impact statement. KOA has until Feb. 21 to respond to the volley of concerns it received last week at the planning board hearing, with board members saying it will take months to reach some kind of decision—so stay tuned. There’s more needless drama to come.

A Clear Skies “glamping dome,” which because of its shape (a 28-foot diameter) has an even bigger footprint than one of KOA’s glamping tents.

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