Tag: development moratorium

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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NIMBY part 2: Maggie Valley woes

Straddling a winding North Carolina road, halfway between Asheville and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the town of Maggie Valley is the kind of vacation spot that appeals to people looking for hiking trails, Appalachian vistas, wildflowers and black bears. No surprise, then, that despite a relative lack of flat ground it has at least nine campgrounds and RV parks along a two-mile stretch of the main drag, which seems like a fair number for a town of only 1,700 or so–but for some, there’s never enough.

Riding the same wave of pandemic-juiced development that is afflicting other naturally beautiful areas, Maggie Valley also has been contending with the grandiose plans of a Myrtle Beach-based developer, Frankie Wood, who for the past two years has been spinning tales of how he intends to revive a now-defunct tourist attraction, Ghost Town in the Sky. Ghost Town has been sitting in mothballs since 2002, and Wood–as reported by The Mountaineer–apparently hasn’t invested a penny of his own money in the mountain-top amusement park. But he does have a “trail of bad debts and court cases over the past 30 years,” including having his own home foreclosed on in 2019.

In best “Music Man” style, however, Wood has besotted much of the Maggie Valley business establishment with his grand designs, acquiring partners for other projects he insists must precede The Big One. Chief among these is a need for more housing for all the employees he’ll eventually need, which translates into planned unit developments, trailer courts and more RV parks, which–given Maggie Valley’s vertical geography–has meant a flurry of rezoning requests to allow increased building density. And, for a while, Wood was getting all that and more, receiving dozens of land-use designations consistent with high-density development.

But while much of the business community warmed up to Wood, a clear majority of Maggie Valley residents felt otherwise. Too much was going on, and what was going on was too helter-skelter, without a clear vision of how everything would fit together or how it would reshape the town. Last fall, with two of the town’s aldermen positions up for election, two of the four candidates campaigned on a “smart growth” platform–and were overwhelmingly propelled into office by the biggest voter turnout anyone in Maggie Valley can recall. “I want to see smart growth, smart investment,” top vote-getter John Hinton summarized for the Smoky Mountain News. “Campgrounds are not smart growth. We want to see homes built. I’d love to see Ghost Town redeveloped . . . but I’ve yet to see a comprehensive plan of how that would work, a comprehensive plan that would not include a burden on the taxpayers of Maggie Valley.”

Lacking such a plan, the town is now drafting its own and expects to have it finished by July. Until then, the Maggie Valley board of aldermen hit the “pause” button, approving on a 3-2 vote a moratorium on any new developments. Sounds smart, doesn’t it? A triumph for local control over zoning and planning decisions? A recognition that there has to be a balanced approach to land use, so that someone doesn’t plop a landfill next to a hospital, or a steel mill in the middle of a housing development?

Not to North Carolina Rep. Mark Pless, who recently told a Mountaineer reporter that a six-month moratorium “sends the wrong message about Haywood County, that we are closed for business.” Dismissing the new aldermen as “wet behind the ears,” Pless–who has just finished serving the first year of his freshman term in office–said he is thinking about introducing legislation to reverse the town’s decision. Such a local override bill doesn’t require the governor’s signature in North Carolina, only needing the approval of the state’s House and Senate–and as the Mountaineer pointed out, legislators from outside the area affected by a local bill typically bow to the wishes of their colleagues.

Home rule? Only a quaint idea when there’s money to be made, even in an area as politically conservative as western North Carolina. Pretty soon the Mountaineer may have to contemplate a name change to something a little less rugged and independent. Maybe the Profiteer. Or better yet, the River City Review.

Because yep, you’ve got trouble right there in River City.