Design and Build

Wondering about RV park design or campground design? Where can you find help with building a campground or RV park? Where should it be built? What are the issues to consider before undertaking the project?

Staves Consulting can help! These four steps show how we approach the task of designing and building RV parks and campgrounds

Step One: Identify the specific parcel of land that you want to develop and then to begin to quantify the costs associated with that specific parcel. Just a few of the questions you need to answer before you commit to purchasing the property are:

  • Can I get proper zoning?
  • What offsite improvements will be required?
  • How will the sewage be handled?
  • What is the source of water?
  • Are there any unusual environmental requirements?
  • Is there a drainage problem?
  • Is the land level or is the grade too steep to be developed?
  • Can I install cabins or other fixed rental units?

You can try to answer these and numerous other questions by yourself or you can retain Staves Consulting to do a complete site analysis for you

Step Two: Hire Staves Consulting to develop the specific campground or RV park layout of sites and amenities. If you purchased a franchise, the franchise company will do this for you. If you have elected to be an independent park, then you will have to hire someone to design the park. This is a preliminary concept design and will be used in order to obtain the proper zoning and planning department approval. Do not spend money on the detailed plans until you have preliminary approval of the concept design. Almost any landscape engineer or architect will tell you they can do the design and they can, but in most cases, they do not start with a market analysis and do not understand the different type of sites that need to go into a park to meet a specific market niche. For this you need someone who understands the entire RV park business. Once the project is ready for final approval, a local engineer can take over. The advantage of a local engineer is that he is licensed in your area and usually knows the people in the planning and zoning departments. If someone who is not licensed in your area develops your concept design, then you will have to take it to a licensed engineer later to develop the final plans.

If you are doing your own design, Staves Consulting can be retained to provide advice to your engineer or we can find a qualified person to prepare it for you

Step Three: After receiving zoning and planning department approval, your local engineer or architect can draw the final plans and solicit bids on the construction of your RV Park or campground. Local knowledgeable people can best handle this step.

Staves Consulting is available to review the specifications before they go out as well as the bids you receive and to try to reduce the total cost of construction

Step Four: Build the park. But at the same time, even though you will be buried in details, don’t forget that now is the time to begin to finalize all of your marketing and business plans for the operation of the park. You will also need to prepare marketing materials like billboard ads, directory ads, rack cards, and many other marketing items. Go to the Manage and Market section to see how Staves Consulting can help you with this effort.

Before you get started

Do you still have questions or concerns?  Contact Staves Consulting and we’ll be happy to help. Call us at 1-406-862-0077, or fill out a short form that tells us a little bit about your project.