RV park won’t open Memorial Day weekend
Work continued on Tuesday morning to get the new Ap- palachia Ridge RV Park ready to open sometime this sum- mer, next to the Museum of Appalachia in Norris. The old grist mill at the museum can be seen in the background. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
“We’re still working up there when it’s not raining, and we really don’t have an opening date yet,” Mandy Conner, one of the park’s owners, said Monday.
“We’ve had a lot of delays regarding electrical service, and we’re working diligently on it,” she said. “Our sign fabricator is getting sign permits. We do plan to be open sometime this season, for sure.
“We still have 200 trees to plant and a lot of finishing touches,” Conner said. “Each RV site gets two trees.”
Plans are to open initially with 107 RV sites, and to build the planned four glamping tents, three tiny homes and two treehouses later, Conner said.
“If the city of Norris allows us to open without those structures this year, we will be constructing them this winter,” she said. “We have asked to be able to do a phased opening.
“The concrete platforms that can be seen through the trees up on the hill will be for the glamping tents, which will be built first,” she added. “The treehouses and tiny homes would be next.”
Conner also emphasized that Appalachia Ridge will not allow long-term RV space rentals. The city’s zoning allows only for rentals of up to 30 days.
She said that would not allow people from the nearby illegal Covenant Life Church RV park to move their trailers to Appalachia Ridge once that park has to close, which has been ordered by a federal judge in Knoxville to take place by May 31.
The church’s RV park, which the church has recently been calling a “retreat,” operates more like a mobile home park, as most of its residents have been there for more than a year.
“We don’t want that,” Conner said. “We don’t even do that at our campground in Sevierville.”
Appalachia Ridge will not have tent sites for rent, either, she said.
The park, just west of the museum, has opened its website (appalachiaridge.com) to reservations, beginning July 1, but Conner said that doesn’t mean the park would be opening by that date.
The park originally had planned to open by spring 2023, but faced several delays, Conner said.
Most recently, the developers had to widen the entrance and exit roads a bit. Work is still underway to finish some electrical hookups and other details.
Construction of the main entrance building and the separate bathhouse have been completed, Conner said.