Editor’s Note: Erin and Dan Thiem are the owners of the Inn Town Campground in Nevada City, Calif.
“What inspired you to build this place?” That’s perhaps the most common question we get asked as owners of Inn Town Campground, a 15-acre private campground in Nevada City, Calif. The answer, like many other campground owners, starts with a story.
We spent five-and-a-half years living, studying and working in New Zealand. Both of our children were born there. New Zealand is a special place, full of geographic and cultural diversity. It’s a country that easily satiates the interminable wanderlust of travelers and provides amazing ways to explore the outdoors.
Prior to moving back to California, we spent several months traveling around New Zealand in a Toyota campervan with our small children. Our favorite nights were those spent at classic Kiwi holiday parks, which offered close access to town, family-friendly amenities like playgrounds and family bathrooms, and a mix of different camping accommodations. Imagine melding an RV park, motel, youth hostel and city park into one friendly, welcoming location. All of the holiday parks we stayed in had a warm sense of community and adventure. That is where the seed for the Inn Town Campground was first planted.
I clearly remember one moment during that trip. At the end of the day, I turned to my husband Dan and asked him if our children, aged two and five at the time, would really remember the trip.
“No,” he said. “But they will have a spirit of adventure and the ability to adapt to new places and the curiosity to explore.”
Once we moved back to California, we spent a lot of time thinking about how to bring that same sense of opportunity for the community, adventure and family-friendly travel to our small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Neither of us were developers but we both shared a vision for what we wanted to build: a campground with the look and feel of a well-maintained state park, but with the hospitality and amenities of the great kiwi holiday parks. We wanted it close to town and focused on a sense of community, both at camp and more widely. I had a strong background in hospitality and social media marketing, having taken over ownership of the family’s motel business. Dan had an MBA and a background in building supply management and city planning. I started envisioning the brand and how to get the word out; he began figuring out how to get it done.
The work began in October 2013. From sourcing and buying the property to planning permission and construction, the process of building the campground was an amazing, and oftentimes, terrifying adventure.
We knew that we needed plenty of good help. One of the first contacts Dan made was Bryan McAlister, a fellow Cub Scout dad. I remember reading one of his scout emails and looking at his signature line, it said Sierra Land Solutions. I had a pretty good idea that I would need a lot of land solutions for a campground.
After an initial call, we set up a meeting and that’s when the project started gaining traction. To this day, I credit Bryan with opening my eyes to the scale and complexity of the project.
From there, it was a matter of getting all of the information needed for a city-use permit. Bryan developed a site plan and civil engineering packet. Our architect rendered 3-D drawings for our buildings. Meanwhile, Dan worked on assembling the rest of the information for the conditional use permit. Having been on our town’s planning commission at the time, he knew the use permit process well.
There were specialist reports, surveys and will-serve letters to get, plus negotiations with neighbors and the city for access and easements. We even bought a glamping tent and set up a few example sites so the city staff could get an idea of what our vision would entail.
Miraculously, we were able to navigate all those planning obstacles and submit a comprehensive use permit application in June 2014. Almost one year to the day after purchasing the property, in October 2014, we received final planning approval for the project.
Next, we got to work on the civil and architectural construction plans. That process took about six months. We were ready for infrastructure work by June 2015 and building construction by August of that year. We hired local contractors for both infrastructure and building work.
As with any big project, there were many issues along the way. We had to navigate multiple different public and regulatory agencies, plus our local gas and electric utility. We had to grant maintenance and access easements, which sometimes conflicted with other easements. In one example, the local water district was arguing with us about subordinating a preservation easement to their maintenance easement. The negotiations took so long that we didn’t have a final water connection until about one month before opening day, which was scheduled for July 1, 2016. There were many sleepless nights as we tried to navigate the requirements.
Meanwhile, I was busy running the motel business and building our campground’s brand online. We hired a professional photographer to shoot our mockup campsites and were able to use those images for social media posts and teasers. By January 2016, we had our reservation system open and ready. The efforts were so successful that we were more than three-quarters full for our first-night open.
Building this campground has felt like the culmination of many adventures. Six years ago, I stood in the warm Caribbean Sea on yet another wild trip. At that moment, I realized that our job is not just to experience the world’s most beautiful places, it’s also our job — and one of the goals of a campground — to inspire others to do just that in our own beautiful part of the world and to work to protect those places.
We want to help the next generation of adventurers get out and see what this big, diverse world has to offer and to make the world a better place for the generation that comes after.
Over the years we’ve come to recognize how fortunate we are to have had the opportunity to make our dream and vision a reality. We meet many people every year who ask us about our experience building the campground. Many of them are dreamers caught up in the glitz of building something unique and fun, but we try to remind them that it’s a lot of hard work too!
So here are a few of our top 10 recommendations for those who are looking to get into the business:
- Know your audience.
- Hire the right team. Be as clear as you can be on the roles and responsibilities, especially if you’re creating a business with your spouse.
- Get involved in your community, small businesses, local non-profits, education, government officials and police departments. Get to know them all.
- Find your voice, your vision, your niche and be consistent.
- Make sure the expectations of your customers align with what you have to offer.
- Be able to adapt. Things do not always go according to plan and while you’re never going to be able to have a backup plan for every scenario, make sure you have an open mind and are able to pivot or recognize when something needs to be changed.
- Take pride in what you offer. Your staff, customers and community will feel it
- Continue to learn, be involved, volunteer, take a class and grow your business.
- Continue to dream
From the seed of the dream to the building to the running of our campground, we’ve been consistent on what we wanted, a place that we would want to camp in.
