NEW HOPE, Tenn. — Developers proposing a $30 million RV resort with 250 to 400 spaces on the Tennessee River and the family that has owned the land since 1970 contend the project will be good for the community and could bring in an estimated $1 million a year in hospitality tax revenue.
The proposed RV park sparked a petition in opposition that will be presented to the New Hope Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Monday when family members and developers will be on hand to offer details, provide information on similar resort developments the company has and answer questions about their idea for New Hope.
Dan Thornton is the commercial real estate broker working with the group proposing the facility and the family who owns the property. He said he wants the community to understand the proposal is not for a simple campground but a high-end RV park built in a resort setting.
"The key word is 'resort,'" Thornton said Tuesday at the farm gate leading to the 110-acre New Hope parcel filled with purple and yellow blooms of spring. "It's under contract. We haven't closed yet. We have to do due diligence, and the biggest due diligence factor is rezoning."
That is likely to be a topic of discussion at the city meeting on Monday.
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Thornton, who worked for the city of Chattanooga years ago as the manager of real property, said the proposed RV resort doesn't pose a traffic issue for New Hope, utilities to the site would be provided by South Pittsburg while New Hope's police and fire departments would provide emergency services.
The RV resort answers a growing market, he said, pointing to increasing RV sales in recent years.
"Two years ago they sold something like 648,000 RVs. It was just unbelievable, and the average price of an RV is between $100,000 and $200,000. And if you get a fifth-wheel RV, those are a big travel trailer, and you pull it with a heavy-duty truck, that's like $75,000," he said. "It's not a low-end campground by any means."
Aaron Hillman is an architect who works for Arizona-based Red Moon Development, the company proposing the RV resort and the man who'll attend Monday's meeting.
"I know that everybody's afraid of the unknown," Hillman said Tuesday in a phone interview. "We were just over there a couple of weeks or so ago, and ever since then, I think word kind of spread around before we were ready. I plan on being there at the meeting on Monday to talk about the project."
Hillman, a landscape architect by trade, said Red Moon representatives travel the nation looking for land for RV resort facilities and recently found the site in New Hope.
"We visited the site and met with Dan Thornton and then talked with the mayor briefly just looking at the site," he said. "Nothing major had been done on our end. We usually do a ton of due diligence and utility coordination and make sure things will work before we even get to the point of talking to municipalities, but it seems the information has slowly started to creep out there."
He said media coverage of the petition quickly pushed the conversation forward, and he plans to address concerns from residents in person.
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"We're still in the 'possible' stage. What we do at Red Moon is look at properties that fit the shift of the population that is choosing to travel in high-end RVs throughout the U.S., which seems more and more popular every year," Hillman said. "Years ago when people retired, they might buy a second home or a vacation-type home somewhere, but now the trend is moving more to being more mobile and seeing the beautiful countryside we have across the United States."
Red Moon's RV resorts are typically 200-400 spaces or more, with high-end amenities, according to Hillman. If the New Hope RV resort becomes reality, it will probably initially be built for 250 spaces, and Red Moon uses local contractors for the construction, he said.
"Our goal is not to pack people in. We don't do annual memberships at any of the parks that we've developed because most of the market we're looking to hit is the short- to medium-stay lengths, that would be seven to 21 days. I'd say that's about our average," he said.
Hillman said other nearby campgrounds are examples of what the RV resort will not be. To stay at one of the group's resorts the RV must be 10 years old or newer, which Hillman said is the industry standard for a high-end facility, and each resort restricts noise and has 24-hour security monitors.
"We provide the location and a set of amenities ranging from clubhouses, pools, laundry buildings, pickleball courts, spas, showers. We usually have a pond element and there's a check-in general store," he said. "We have projects going now in Hilton Head, Savannah, projects open in Arizona, and we have projects that are opening in the Palm Springs area. Our goal is not to create a park where somebody brings in an old RV and it never moves. That is the opposite of our goal."
Hillman said the proposed facility has many pros and few cons, and he looks forward to Monday's meeting.
"I am anxious to talk to the people about why this site is worth our $30 million investment," he said.
Someone representing the family that owns the property will be present at Monday's meeting, too, and family members said they want people to know they care about New Hope as much as they do.
Amy Turner Burns, one of the sibling owners of the property, said she hopes residents will wait to hear more details before deciding how they feel about the proposal, noting she, her siblings and the prospective resort developers are aware of the immediate blowback from the community.
"Our family feels quite differently about the idea of bringing such a wonderful development to New Hope, Tennessee," Burns said Monday via email. "We want to be part of the discussion and show the positive impact of this Class A RV park."
Burns' brother, Richard Turner, said the family's roots, love of New Hope and history of community service go back decades.
"My family in Marion County goes back to the early 1800s. Most of us don't leave Marion County, but I've lived in Oak Ridge for the last 20-plus years, and I expected my entire life to be spent in Marion County, but things happened," Turner said Tuesday in a phone interview. "My father bought this piece of property in 1970 — the actual close date says March 28, 1970 — that was the day I was born."
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The siblings' father, Paul Turner, was a well-known figure in business and government, Turner said. He once owned a grocery store in South Pittsburg called Paul's Food Market.
"He's been passed away almost 25 years. Throughout the '70s we used to have a ferry boat to the New Hope community. My father lobbied and used his political connections to get the bridge built," he said of the Shelby Rhinehart Bridge built in 1981 to span the Tennessee River to New Hope from South Pittsburg. "He even sold a portion of the farm to allow for the construction of the bridge."
Turner said the property has been up for sale for a couple of years, and others have shown interest in it. He said the five children who inherited the family farm were not in a position to buy out the others' interest, so they decided the best option was to sell it.
"We would never intentionally sell to anyone that would negatively impact the community," he said. "That's just not in our DNA."
Meanwhile, some New Hope residents are crying foul.
When they heard of the development in March, some residents raised the alarm and launched a petition in opposition calling for town leaders to block the development. New Hope residents Rhonda Lawson and Jasen King, two of the most vocal opponents, continue to eye the proposed development with suspicion.
"Either there will be people traveling who live in an RV as a primary residence or on vacation residing in what would be considered a secondary residence. The ordinance was passed in 2018 specifically to prevent people from living in RVs, campers, motorhomes and Amish-type buildings and several had to be grandfathered in," Lawson said Wednesday in an email to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "New Hope was incorporated back in the '70s to prevent annexation by South Pittsburg, and all this time there has been one thing or another trying to upset our peaceful separate existence."
Lawson hopes an ordinance the city amended in 2018 defining single-family dwellings and restricting uses of RVs and campers will bar the way for developers.
King, who launched the petition in opposition to the site last month, believes the project is already a done deal.
"I'm watching this thing unfold in front of me and it seems that it can't be stopped from coming," King said via email.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569.