Topping the November park board agenda was a discussion on setting 2021 rates for the Grand Marais Municipal campground and marina.
In 2019, the average revenue generated from a standard camp site was roughly $3,183 and $4,165 for prime camp sites. Prime sites are those located closest to Lake Superior. The park offers a select pool of 100 seasonal sites and 31 prime sites with prominent views of the lake.
Monthly policies were also reviewed. As it stands now, if someone stays for two months or more, they may return to that site for the following year. Park Manager Dave Tersteeg said this effectively creates a first-right of deposit on monthly sites so that previous guests can return year after year to the same site.
With roughly 280 folks on the general waiting list, a vacancy is first offered to an internal waiting list of current monthly guests seeking a different site. Once that is filled, the remaining vacant sites are offered to the general waiting list. Typically, noted Tersteeg, prime sites are placed from the internal waiting list, with standard sites offered on the general list.
With hundreds of people on the general waiting list and an average of five site openings a season, Tersteeg said it could be a long wait for new folks signing up.
At their October meeting, the park board voted to increase 2021 nightly rates and marina rates by five percent.
Using 2018 as an example, nightly rates in the campground increased 0-8.9 percent depending on the site. The average across 14 different sites was a 2.8 percent hike over 2017. Tent sites increased the least, while lakeside full hook-up RV sites jumped the most.
“The number one priority of our revenue is city tax relief; every dollar our operation nets is one less dollar levied from the pockets of city tax payers,” Tersteeg noted.
Another reason to raise rates is to maintain a healthy budget and have funds to reinvest in the park and marina.
After some discussion the park board voted to raise monthly rates by 5 percent, but there was some grey area in the discussion that will be brought up at the December meeting.
As far as pros and cons of the current policy, Tersteeg said returning seasonal customers feel secure in the knowledge that their site is available year after year. ‘The deposit process in January is simple and efficiently books most of our monthly sites.”
However, the biggest challenge when it comes to placing monthly sites, is the time it takes to work the lists, make offers, wait for decisions and move forward,” Tersteeg said.
Monthly sites vary in size and location and the size of an RV versus the size of a site is usually the factor that breaks or make a deal, he said. “We had toyed with a policy where if you declined an offer, you moved to the end of the list, but we soon learned this was not fair in light of the mismatch of RV size and lot size. We have some very small monthly sites that are tough to place.”
For now, the park board isn’t going to change the current policy, but remains in conversation about the potential to make changes that are fair to the public.
Disk golf
Once again a discussion was held about the potential to make a disc golf course on city owned property adjacent to Gunflint Hills Golf Course.
A relatively new sport, disk golf, which is played with Frisbees thrown at disc golf baskets which are placed along meandering trails typically through a wooded setting. Adam Mella proposed using the woods adjacent to the Gunflint Hills golf course as a place to make a nine-hole disc golf course at the board’s last meeting. Adam came back with more information at this meeting, outlining costs and work needed to establish a public disc golf course.
The disc target baskets are anchored into the ground and currently cost between $250 and $400 each, although rates may change in the spring when there is potential for better rates when buying multiple targets, Mella told the board.
Cost would range from $2,250 to $3,600 to buy targets, and signage would need to be purchased but Mella felt that could be done relatively cheaply to keep the cost down.
Volunteers, said Mella, would do maintenance. He suggested putting a trash and recycling bin at the first and last target, and they could be added to the current pickup schedule of trash and recycling bins situated on the Gunflint Hills golf course.
While the park board is intrigued with establishing a disk golf course at Gunflint Hills, they didn’t make any decision at this meeting and will discuss it at upcoming meetings.
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