New KOA owners pressing ahead with key projects, relationships

The new owners of the KOA in Leavenworth, Recreational Adventures Co., has been busy building a new road, along with making necessary improvements to sewer and water. They are also making some improvements to the park to go along with all the changes.
Al Johnson, the executive vice president of RAC, spoke to the Leavenworth City Council recently in response to letter in the Echo by a River Bend Drive resident.
“I’m here to talk about the KOA for a few minutes. I read a letter that was sent to the paper about the council. It brought up four different topics that I really felt strongly I would like to provide a different opinion or viewpoint on it, if that’s okay with you,” Johnson said.
One of the points, Johnson said, seemed indicate that because they are out of state and have a lawyer in the ownership that somehow they are not a very reputable company. He wanted to refute that.
“Our company was founded by Rich Cutler some 40 years ago. He hired me to run it when his three sons were less than 12 years old. Rich is in the South Dakota Hall of Fame in the business category. Very reputable. His oldest son is a lawyer and not all lawyers are bad,” Johnson said. “He founded the Cutler Law Firm in Souix Falls, which is one of the most respected in the state. His two brothers work in the campground company with me. His oldest son is the assistant manager here at the KOA. There is a commitment here to do a good job.”
Johnson said he is currently the chairman of the National Campground and RV Park Association representing 3,000 campgrounds across the country. He’s also on the multidisciplinary committee that makes the national standards for campgrounds with the National Fire Protection Association.
“We’re involved in the industry. We know how to do RV parks. We do them well. We have a dozen RV parks around the country,” Johnson said.
Another point in the letter indicated their guests were less than honorable.
“Our customers, maybe some of you are RV owners. Maybe you enjoy camping. To classify us as drunken octogenarians with tri-focles ... some of the other things that were said, there were needles and all kinds of things going on out there,” Johnson said. “In the years we’ve been out there, we’ve never seen it. I think it does a disservice to our customers who are also guests of the city of Leavenworth to have that kind of information out there. It does present economic damage to us because people read that and decide they don’t want to stay there.”
Johnson pointed out the person that wrote the letter actually lives in Seattle. The president of the River Bend Park Association also lives in Seattle. He didn’t know how much time they actually spent at River Bend Drive.
“To say it is some outsider from South Dakota who doesn’t care just isn’t true. The road itself, to my knowledge, in the 40 or 50 years the road has been there, I don’t believe there has been an accident I’m aware of. I’m sure it would have come out,” Johnson said. “We’re spending over $3 million to relieve the traffic by taking all our guest traffic in a different way.”
The letter also indicated there was some kind of requirement the existing driveway be closed off.
“The question was, whether we ever obliged to close that entrance. We talked the original developer of the property and he indicated that was never an intention to close that driveway,” Johnson said. “If you read the original conditional use permit by the county it says, at some point the traffic would be relieved not eliminated. Traffic relief routes are ones that take traffic away, they don’t close one in favor of the other.”
The letter also referred to River Bend Drive as a residential road, Johnson said.
“It’s a county road. It’s always been a county road. I don’t think the county designates anything to be a residential street. When it started, it was more commercial than residential. There is still commercial property on both sides of River Bend Drive as it begins. The last half of River Bend Drive is the campground,” Johnson said. “It’s always been mixed use. It’s never been strictly residential and to characterize it that way just isn’t true. I just want to assure you about who we are and what we are trying to do. I can’t imagine with the amount of traffic we’re taking out, there will be any trouble.”
RAC is KOA’s largest franchisee, with KOA’s all over the country. They found out the KOA in Leavenworth was in receivership. Johnson said they were aware it was an exceptional property, so they started pursuing it three years ago.
They found out about the sewer issues through the receivership process. Buying the property, they were obliged to expand the city utilities and the street project.
“It’s going to be great. If we have a park anywhere that we can possible put on public utilities rather than our own private utilities, we do it. This is that opportunity,” Johnson said. “Building a street, getting the plans together for that. There were any number of negotiations with the city, where we had to come through. That took a lot longer than we thought. We thought it would be all done right now. Obviously, we’re moving forward.”
Johnson said he is familiar with the history of conflicts between the KOA and the neighbors on River Bend Drive.
“It turns out there is 50 years of conflict. Whether the conflict was there 50 years ago or built over 50 years, we really thought it would go away with new owners. It hasn’t been quite that easy. But it is improving,” Johnson said. “We’re feeling more and more part of the community and I think our neighbors are feeling more and more comfortable with who we are and that we’re doing what we said we would, which has not always been the case, in my understanding.”
In terms of closing off the current entrance completely, as the RVPA has suggested, Johnson said that is not the plan. Any number of entities like emergency services want them to keep it open. It is also good for KOA, he said.
“The main concern of the River Bend neighbors is to get the RV traffic off the road. I think we’ve demonstrated to the them, with the new road and some provisions we’re working on with the city for our driveway connection, as people leave on the new road, they won’t be able to go to River Bend. The go-in and come-out on the new street,” Johnson said. “We may need a little period of time to retrain people who have been coming here for decades to get it out on the GPS systems so people are coming the right way. I think it will happen fairly fast.”
Johnson said they’ve invested more into the road project that they are obliged to.
“We are changing the campground because, where people will be coming in now, used to be the very back of the campground. That was the maintenance yard and the worst campsites in the park, the very back,” Johnson said. “Now it will be our front door. We’re doing an even bigger project within the park than we had to do outside to make sure when people come in they have that front door experience. We’re moving the maintenance from there to the back. Our very nicest sites will be on that front end. It’s going to be really nice when it’s done.”
Traffic on River Bend Drive should be around 85 percent reduced, he said. He wouldn’t be surprised if they take deliveries through the River Bend entrance, but the RV traffic will be gone.
There will be signage directing campers where to go.
The roads at the park have been torn up to make way for new water mains and fire hydrants. Johnson said there is a lot of behind the scenes stuff costing lots of money.
“We did a nice project around the pool. It’s all the new concrete. We’ve moved our coffee cabin. It was out of sight. It’s up front now. We’re removing all the septic tanks and drain fields. That is part of the agreement,” he said. “That will all be conveyed to the city system, but we had to put in a new lift station to do all that.”
The PUD is pulling wires to the city lift station. KOA pumps sewer to the city system, which it pumps it to the Safeway area. He expects that to be functional in the next week or two.
The timeline for the new road is probably a month or two.
“Link, which is building a new station there, needed some modifications to the stormwater. While the engineers we’re working on that, it stalled out there for awhile,” Johnson said. “Once that is all in, then they’ll be shaping sidewalks and ditches, getting the street ready to pave. We probably won’t want to pave until the heavy construction equipment is out of the park too. It’s all happening at the same time. We’re hoping we get done with the park the same time the road gets done.”
Will all these changes make a difference to their River Bend neighbors?
“There’s even been disagreement within the River Bend directors on how to treat us. They want to maintain a really hard line. Some are saying these people are doing a hard job so let’s cooperate. We get our traffic off the road faster if we cooperate,” Johnson said. “We’re just hopeful to get this normalized. When Danielle (Akey, KOA manager) got here, she was friends with everyone out there. Then, it never went anywhere. It’s wasn’t what we expected. Hopefully, over time, they will know we respect them and hopefully we’ll be respected.”
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.