Oh, those wacky developers! They’ll put up anything, anywhere, if given half a chance—and what could be more enticing than a nice, flat, easily sculpted flood plain?
Take the town of Leland, North Carolina, on the west side of the forebodingly named Cape Fear River and across the river from Wilmington. Like a lot of rural areas and small towns, Leland’s ordinances hadn’t kept up with the times. So when a company named Evolve Acquisitions disclosed that it wanted to build an RV park on a 96-acre property zoned for residential use, town council members belatedly learned that their land-use rules didn’t cover such a possibility. In the absence of specific campground standards, council members would have to be guided by the standards of the most similar activity—which, town planners told them, would be a hotel or motel.
Which, as any campground owner can tell you, are as similar to an RV park as a golf car is to a honey wagon, despite both having wheels.
That was in late 2021, and by early 2022 the council had adopted a comprehensive set of campground regs that included minimum acreage, site size and spacing, open-space minimums and setbacks, etc. etc. But the regs also specified that campground sites could not be located in a flood hazard area—and you can probably guess where this is going.
Almost a year-and-a-half later, Evolve has submitted a request that the town council delete that bothersome prohibition about flood hazard areas. Sound reckless? Nah—Evolve also suggested that the ordinance include a requirement for such sites to be posted with signs warning campers that they’re in a flood zone, and that they would have to evacuate the park within 24 hours of a declared state of emergency. As Evolve’s lawyer, Samuel Franck, explained to the county planning board a few weeks ago, his clients had sought the RV ordinance language but did not intend it to restrict the use of flood hazard areas, and so were simply seeking to “correct a mistake.”
Wow. When it comes to this whole scenario, there is no shortage of mistakes. Start with the premise that someone in the “hospitality industry” thinks it’s reasonable to shuck the responsibility of providing safe accommodations by posting a sign that may or may not be read, but which in any case attempts to absolve the campground of any liability if things (predictably) go south. Add to that the distinct possibility that advance notice of impending floods could be laughably short and in any case meaningless: it’s been less than five years since the Cape Fear River swelled to its highest level in 73 years, thanks to Hurricane Florence, and just two years before that, Hurricane Matthew and Tropical Storm Hermine pounded the area with more than two feet of rain. Flooded roads and washed-out bridges made evacuation impossible. People died.
Then there’s the sheer idiocy of continuing to develop flood plains, which increases the amount of impermeable soil and results in even greater flooding. The Cape Fear River drains an area the size of New Jersey, but increased urbanization and suburbanization of the watershed have left thousands of acres unable to absorb rainfall, with catastrophic results. It’s ironic, therefore, that Evolve’s internet home page proudly proclaims, “Location. Location. Location! Evolve knows all about the importance of developing in the right place and at the right time.” That may be true for the apartment buildings that comprise 98% of its portfolio, but none of those could have been built in a flood zone and still qualify for financing.
This penchant for plopping RV parks onto flood plains with the blithe assurance that campers can just roll out of the way when trouble comes is disconcertingly common. It also tends to result in lawsuits. A proposal to build a glampground on a sandbar of an island in the Gallatin River, in southwest Montana, has been a political football the past couple of years and was the subject of a court hearing last week; further developments are expected any day. Meanwhile, a controversy over a proposed 240-site RV park in the Platte River flood plain west of Omaha, which also ended up with a lawsuit being filed last summer, was resolved only when a third party stepped in and bought the entire 101 acres for $2.5 million. The new owners say they will leave the property in its undeveloped state. In both cases, the would-be developers dismissed flooding concerns by claiming people could just drive out of harm’s way—which doesn’t really get at the question of why people should be placed in harm’s way in the first place.
But RV parks and campgrounds are the hottest corner of the commercial real estate market right now, so developers with little to no relevant experience have been piling on. And Evolve does have at least one—just one—RV campground to its credit, the Oceans RV Resort in Holly Ridge, N.C. which opened earlier this year. Reviews thus far are glowing, but it’s all very new and hurricane season is just starting. Meanwhile, Evolve’s Leland venture will be going before the town council June 15, with a planning commission recommendation that its application be denied. Ultimately, the commission said, prohibiting RV parks in flood hazard area is safer for the public.
Some things apparently aren’t self-evident.
Most recent posts
Renting Dirt 