Starting a new RV campground...

RGar974417 wrote:
I am an electrical contractor and Mayor of a small Borough in Pa. In our state,it is so hard and expensive to build anything new with all the regulations. I would suggest buying an existing campground and then make it into what you want.

I had a conversation with a CG owner up near the PA. Grand Canyon. He had attended a workshop at the state CG owners gathering. One topic of discussion was a woman who really wanted to create a new CG in PA. She had money and drive, but she really was unable to convince any of the seasoned oldtimer owners that she was making a wise decision, based on the anticipated ROI, and the stupid amount of hoops you need to jump though trying to get past the endless PA. bureaucracy. I also had a business associate, a few years back, who really put a lot of effort into buying an existing PA. campground. He had a million dollars to put down on a deal, and spent over ten grand in his search, a lot of it on his accountant, reviewing books. He reached the conclusion that a lot of CGs for sale only really functioned, and often barely at that, based on the fact that they were family owned, often for generations, and never valued the real estate in their thinking. Until they decided to sell. At that point, the value of the ground, weighed against fairly weak net income from the CG, typically meant that purchasing the business made little sense.

We currently live in Lancaster county, which pretty much validates the problem. Eight million tourist a year, mostly in my neighborhood, the "Amish Country" east of the city. There are a half dozen CGs here, that are jamb packed all summer, with hefty daily rates, and all of them are decades old. OTOH, you can't swing a cat in these parts without hitting a hotel, and they keep building more new ones.