Tag: Midway Kentucky

RV bluegrass is seriously out of tune

This is what the Kentucky Bluegrass Experience Resort will look like—or maybe not. NadiGroup’s site plan, as well as all of its other photos and documentation, seems to have vanished from public view.

Bluegrass: now there’s a multi-layered word. It can refer to a musical style popularized by Kentuckian Bill Monroe, not unlike country music but consisting entirely of stringed instruments. It can refer to the lush grass covering much of Kentucky’s rolling hills, giving that state its nickname. But these days it also can mean a battleground pitting real estate developers against that other Kentucky icon, its thoroughbreds.

A proposed mega RV park calling itself the Kentucky Bluegrass Experience Resort (KBER) is now entering its fifth year of laying siege to the town of Midway (midway between Frankfort and Lexington) and the surrounding county of Woodford. First floated to Midway officials in June of 2020, the massive $40 million project thereafter slid rapidly from ready acceptance to growing horror at its scope and environmental impact, to permit denials and a lawsuit, and now to greater secrecy by the developers about just what it is they’re contemplating. Adding to the intrigue: while KBER’s access road and a chunk of its acreage are in Woodford County, an even larger piece of the property is on the other side of a creek, in adjacent Scott County—and the two jurisdictions could scarcely be more dissimilar in their views on economic development.

Now things are coming to a head, as KBER’s developers look to surmount a final regulatory barrier by seeking a zoning change in Scott County that would allowing recreational development of 96.9 acres currently reserved for agriculture. The county planning commission originally scheduled a July 11 vote on the application, but that’s been moved to August 8. And in the interim, local resistance has steadily mounted, this time spearheaded by the area’s thoroughbred farm owners, some of whom have property adjoining to KBER’s parcel but who despite that proximity only now are recognizing they face an existential threat.

“Horses need a place that’s quiet. There’s just no way we can survive if that RV park goes in,” Foxbrook Farm owner Jason Tackitt told T.D. Thornton, of the Thoroughbred Daily News. “Anybody who raises thoroughbreds knows that you can’t have noise and disruptions. Noise changes horses’ sleeping patterns and it affects pregnant mares. We can’t have that.” Should the KBER project actually go through, he added, he won’t have any recourse but to move his 20 thoroughbreds, probably to Florida—as will many of his neighbors, a prospect he simply can’t fathom. “If something like this happens to you, it’s like a slap in the face. It’s like people saying, ‘We don’t value horse-raising in this area.'”

That KBER would have a major game-changing impact on the area is undeniable. As originally proposed, it would have placed 818 RV sites, 155 cottages, 15 spots for employee accommodations and 37 rustic tent sites across 240 acres split by the ox-bowed Elkhorn Creek, creating one of the ten largest RV parks in the eastern U.S. But that’s not all. In addition to the usual campground amenities, like an aquatic park, sports courts and game room, KBER’s developers planned to lean into its “resort” aspirations with a business center, a fitness and yoga center, spa services, food services with seating for 400, a 525-person capacity amphitheater and an educational center with a 100-person capacity. The “bluegrass experience” theme was to be served with a farmer’s market of local produce, equestrian trails and a bourbon-tasting room. There would be golf car rentals, mini-golf and mini-bowling, kayaking, perhaps a lazy river . . . .

That was the original plan. What it is now is anyone’s guess, although some permutations can be traced. When Midway’s town elders finally understood the immensity of what was being proposed, they threw up the only roadblock available to them by denying the project’s application to hook into the town’s sewage treatment plant. KBER responded by applying for a state permit to build its own treatment plant, assuring county officials that it had severely reduced the project’s footprint—“in response to criticism that that proposal was ‘too big'”—by withdrawing plans for developing its 142 acres in Scott County. The downsized, more modest KBER would have only 390 RV sites and 82 cottages, all on Woodford County’s side of Elkhorn Creek.

But KBER’s application for the Scott County portion of the property was only “postponed,” according to that county’s planning commission. So, bogus claim. And when Woodford County wouldn’t relent, KBER simply shifted the site for its proposed sewage treatment plant across the creek, to Scott County—a jurisdiction that’s home to the world’s largest Toyota Motors’ manufacturing plant, and one with clearly more receptive views of large economic projects than its agriculturally-fixated neighbor. And while Elkhorn Creek had been severely polluted decades earlier by raw sewage from a trailer park treatment plant, resulting in a Scott County ban on private treatment plants in the area—well, times change. Memories fade. Economic imperatives demand the benefit of the doubt.

“There are RV parks all across the United States that are generating opportunities, and I have concerns about cutting that opportunity out because of negative issues in the past,” asserted a Scott County regulator last fall in a lead-up to that county’s eventual approval of KBER’s application, summarizing the new attitude.

That would have seemed to be that, had not that pesky rezoning matter started edging into local awareness. And as it did, KBER’s neighbors who had been oblivious to what was going on belatedly woke up, and nowhere more so than in the thoroughbred farming community—which, yes, recognizes that it’s been asleep at the switch. As Thornton wrote in his extensive article in Thoroughbred Daily News: “Although Tackitt said opposition to the RV park is now at a can’t-miss level within the community because of roadside signage, mass mailings, and online social media groups devoted to stopping the development, he acknowledged that some abutters [those whose property abuts the KBER parcel]—including himself—didn’t immediately pick up on the threat.”

Now, as Tackitt and the other breeders interviewed by Thornton scramble to defend their way of life, KBER’s promoters have gone dark. In sharp contrast to early days, when project owner Andrew Hopewell and local real estate broker Joey Svec were glad-handing local officials and mounting a full-court publicity blitz about the economic benefits of their idea, these days . . . nothing. Hopewell ghosted Thornton’s efforts to get a response to community concerns. A wealth of online information about the project has disappeared. The number of proposed RV and other sites now varies from one public account to another, and an initial project cost estimate of $40 million—after a four-year delay—almost certainly is too low, raising questions of how the bottom line will pencil out.

But perhaps the most disturbing void in all the publicly available information is the disappearance of the Kentucky Bluegrass Experience Resort from the NadiGroup website. The Nadi-designed site plan at the top of this column was just one of the many documents once available from the Canadian design firm, as it unabashedly showed off the most ambitious of its many RV park projects—gone. Nowhere to be found. And with no public explanation of such a disappearing act, leaving open to conjecture just what changes KBER’s plans are undergoing, and what further effect those plans will have on Kentucky’s horse country.

The Aug. 8 meeting in Scott County promises to be one helluva bluegrass experience, all right (cue the strings)!

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RVing shenanigans of the past year

No, this is not a glamping tent, no matter how much it looks like one. It’s an Airbnb rental, which means it sits not in a campground but on a residential site—along with 12 others in Minnesota.

The end of one year and the start of another frequently prompts retrospectives by those seeking closure or looking to demonstrate their cleverness. Sometimes it would be better if they didn’t.

This week, for example, the RV Industry Association breathlessly announced its “top 10 highlights from 2023!” and led off with its 2023 Vacation Cost Comparison Study. Released last April, this 125-page analysis “found” that “RV vacations cost much less than other types of vacation travel, even when factoring in fuel prices and the cost of RV ownership.” “Found”— rather than “established” or “determined”—was an apt choice of verbs, given its overtone of accidental discovery.

Indeed, as I wrote here and here, the “comparison study” suffered from several analytical errors and oversights, leading me to conclude that “the argument that RVing is an economical way to vacation works only if such a vehicle gets deposited in your driveway for free and it never suffers any mechanical issues.” But at least RVIA was touting its cost-benefit analysis in an understandable if flawed attempt to bolster sagging RV sales, which despite such efforts continued their plunge right through the end of the year. There’s less excuse, however, for RVIA to continue promoting such questionable claims today, even if in the guise of a top-ten list of the past year. That’s like the White Star Line citing the April 2 completion of RMS Titanic as one of its highlights of 1912.

Perhaps RVIA leadership is just too lazy or too innumerate to engage in a bit of critical thinking about its output. As much can’t be said for the outright grifters that the campground industry has attracted the past couple of years, few of whom can claim ignorance of the scams they’re peddling. Take Travis John, for example. As I wrote last January, John was looking to raise $8 million from 10,000 or so investors so he—and they—could buy a campground. The sales pitch included a lot of trendy jargon about non-fungible tokens and how John’s company, Campers DAO, would use “latest blockchain technology and an innovative business model to turn a membership into an NFT asset.”

Apparently that innovative business model didn’t find a lot of buyers. And, of course, the whole airy-fairy world of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible anything began wavering, culminating in the November conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried. But by then John had already retreated to a hidey hole somewhere, announcing in April an indefinite delay of the Campers DAO launch while it went about “building more value.” Not a peep out of him since.

Meanwhile, the unbelievable promise of a full year of luxury RV camping for just $3,100 a year has proven to be just that, as two of the four partners in the Whispering Oaks Luxury RV Park in Arkansas filed suit in December against the other two. The aggrieved partners averred that it is “no longer reasonably practical to carry on” the business, not least because, they allege, Brian and Stacy Sides misappropriated business assets for personal gain, bounced checks and otherwise acted in ways that “damage and destroy the business.”

How shocking was that? It shouldn’t have been. As I wrote in April (what’s with this April thing?), Sides already had a record that included defrauding three Joplin, Missouri women out of a combined $29,000 for work he never performed. But when a local reporter earlier this year asked him about the incident, he responded with the classically moronic “there is another guy that done that” riposte. It goes without saying that not a shovelful of dirt has been turned at the luxury RV park site, its website has vanished, and so has the entrance billboard.

Other fantastical campground deals announced last year remain to be played out, including a luxury (aren’t they all, these days?) RV park in Danville, VA proposed by developer Joe Cubas, whose other bright idea is to make that town a Virginia version of Sturgis, SD. And, of course, there’s the grand design by failed Florida real estate developer Ricky Trinidad to build a “white glove” RV resort in Pennsylvania covered by a massive, transparent air dome. Local politicians in both municipalities have been tripping over each other in their eagerness to welcome these so-called revitalization projects, so one can only hope a brisk winter will shock some sense into them.

The seductive—if empty— promise of a financial bonanza for the locals is often enough to mute the critics when someone proposes a multimillion tourist development, but several notable exceptions were notched in 2023. Among them was the victorious campaign in Saugerties, NY against a proposed KOA glampground under the Terramor name plate, and the less heralded deep-sixing of a $30 million luxury (yes, again) campground proposed for New Hope, Tennessee. While the Saugerties battle featured a relatively media-savvy grassroots movement in a relatively economically resilient area, New Hope is “a wide spot on two-lane Route 156 that has one Dollar General, two beauty shops and a meat processing business,” as I wrote in, yes, April. But in July, after a bit of local agitation and a petition drive, the developer backed out.

Local resistance isn’t always effective, though, if an RV resort developer has exceptionally deep pockets and the locals are slow to cotton on to what’s happening. That’s been the story in Midway, Kentucky, where town fathers initially welcomed and then belatedly backpedaled from a monster project known as the Kentucky Bluegrass Experience Resort, projected to become one of the ten largest RV resorts in the eastern U.S. When the full scope of the proposal—and how it would impact the local community—finally sank in, Midway’s city council tried to block the project by refusing to extend municipal water and sewer to the site.

That was more than two years ago, but despite the lack of subsequent headlines, the developers didn’t just go away. Instead they played the long game, culminating in October in approval of an ordinance allowing RV parks to operate private sewer plants. Such private plants had been banned a couple of decades ago, after several local mobile home parks had private systems that failed, spilling raw sewage into local waterways. But history doesn’t repeat—does it?

Finally, one more example of perseverance against local opposition deserves spotlighting. Christine Wyrobek, told by her local planning commission in May (not April!) that she could not build a glampground on her 45 acres abutting Lake Vermilion, Minnesota, went ahead and did so, anyway. She’s just not describing it as a campground. As she explained to a Star Tribune reporter in September, her 13 campsites “fall securely within the county ordinance allowing short-term rentals for fewer than 180 days on residential property—which also allows for VRBO and Airbnb rentals.” And so glampground out, Airbnb rentals in.

Just when you thought all possible blurring of the lines about “camping” had been achieved. . . .

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Poking big money is a risky business

I’ve written several times in recent months about deep-pocketed developers whose plans for outsized RV parks have run into unexpected opposition from local residents. For some unfathomable reason, people living quiet lives in rural communities often don’t cotton to the idea of having an extra thousand or more transients rolling into the area, their narrow country roads overrun by rumbling motorhomes and diesel-chugging trucks hauling travel trailers and fifth wheels. They show up at public hearings and form impromptu opposition committees and throw as much sand into the gears as they can, and they most certainly can bog things down.

But big money often claims big friends, and then the fighting can get downright vicious.

One of those fights is shaping up as a court battle in central Kentucky, where an ambitious proposal to build an RV resort of several hundred sites initially was greeted warmly by municipal leaders, who were sold on the idea that the Kentucky Bluegrass Experience Resort would be an economic shot in the arm for the city of Midway. But as the enormity of the project sank in for local residents, raising concerns about increased traffic and the potential for adverse environmental impacts, sentiment quickly shifted–too late, it seemed, because the developers had already obtained a conditional-use permit.

But Midway’s town fathers, undeterred, found an end-run by blocking KBER’s access to the city’s water and sewage services. KBER’s developers cried foul and responded by suing the city’s Board of Adjustments; in May, with the legal proceedings dragging on and Midway’s city council showing no sign of flinching, they filed a motion to add the city itself as a defendant. And there matters stand, with a project once heralded as an economic godsend morphing into a bloated bully determined to have its way regardless of the cost in local goodwill. Even if KBER wins its legal battle, it will have lost the hearts and minds of its neighbors.

Meanwhile, a more nakedly political brawl is shaping up in western North Carolina, where an RV park-building developer in Maggie Valley has enlisted the help of state representative Mark Pless to revoke the town’s zoning authority. Pless’s measure, adopted this past week in the House, will come up for a vote in the Senate this Monday without a hearing, thanks to an arcane maneuver in which Pless found a bill that the Senate had already passed, stripped out its contents–with the consent of its original sponsor–and substituted his own measure in its place.

Prompting Pless’s ambush was a six-month development moratorium that the town of Maggie Valley had adopted after last fall’s election, in which two new aldermen who had campaigned on a “smart growth” platform were swept into office on an avalanche of support. The moratorium was designed to give the town enough time to complete its Unified Development Ordinance, which had been in the works for years. It also threw a monkey wrench into various development proposals from developer Frankie Wood, who has been holding out the lure of resurrecting the town’s fabled amusement park, Ghost Town in the Sky, while pursuing several RV parks, RV planned unit developments and other high-density projects. It didn’t take Wood long to cozy up to Pless.

Indeed, underscoring how personal these conflicts can become, two provisions of Pless’s bill specifically target Maggie Valley–and both expire Jan. 1, 2025, shortly after the terms of the two recently elected aldermen end. Meanwhile, in an ironic juxtaposition, the town’s development moratorium expires this Monday. The now completed development plan is scheduled for a public hearing at 6:30 p.m.–presumably after the North Carolina Senate will have voted on whether to hogtie the town’s ability to control its growth.

Money and ambition are not averse to steamrolling any claims of self-rule and self-determination. And the more money is at stake, the more devastating and widespread the damage.

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