A proposal to locate a seasonal RV park at the 3400 block of County CC (Wisconsin), where a mobile-home park used to be, was unanimously denied by the Gardner Plan Commission.
According to a report, neighbors of the proposed Goetz RV Park are present at the Gardner Town Hall to express their opposition to the project that could be a division of Goetz’s Resort.
Prior to the commission meeting, neighbors of the property were sent the plans that the town received from the Goetz family. The site has electric, sewer, and water service with 18 slabs; was approved for up to 22 units by the County of Door; and includes an on-site sewage system for all of the units, according to the submitted project plans.
To convert the site for RV use, the plan calls for widening the driveways to at least 35 feet to accommodate long RVs, planting a buffer strip of trees between the RV units and County CC, and upgrading the water hookups to be able to connect with RVs, and changing the electric system to accept RV plug-ins.
John Goetz appeared at the meeting to speak on behalf of the RV park, along with Mark Stevenson, who said that he would be helping Goetz in the development.
Goetz said the RV park would become a lot different than the trailer park with different types of people coming in.
“I’m going to make it better,” he said. “I won’t let it get the way the trailer park was. I won’t make it anywhere near that.”
Commission members and those who attended the meeting expressed concerns regarding the proposed RV park, including how the property would be managed with site rentals by the day, week, month, and season, which would run from April 15 to October 15.
Fal Wing, who lives close to the property on County CC, said nothing discussed at the meeting regarding the proposed RV park was anything akin to a business plan.
“I have to say, in all honesty, that the kind of quality-of-life experience out in Little Sturgeon that was brought about by the mobile-home park that the Goetz family ran was akin to devaluing the property and making my lifestyle miserable at times,” Wing said.
“The sheriff’s deputy squad car was a regular passerby, and since that mobile-home park has been removed, I don’t see the sheriff’s [department] too much anymore. And I don’t have a whole lot of reassurance that just because [Goetz] says it’s not going to be like that, that it’s truly not going to be like that. I have rather just the fear of the opposite.”
Goetz replied that trailer and RV parks attract different types of people, and they didn’t anticipate any issues. However, Plan Commission Chair Mark Lentz said the park type is not the problem.
“The mobile-home park that was there [along County CC] was mismanaged by the Goetz family, pure and simple,” he said.
The commission’s recommendation for denial of the RV-park proposal is being passed on to Gardner Town Board, which will make the final decision in its August 10 meeting.
This story originally appeared on Door County Pulse.