campground Archives - Big Sioux Media

Campground Expansion Continues to Move Forward

June 11, 2017 by Matt Larson, Big Sioux Media

The Dell Rapids City Council heard that the campground expansion and comfort station plans are moving forward and still plan to be completed in 2017 during their last regular meeting on Monday, June 5th.

City Administrator Just Weiland reported to the council that the city has received clearance from the Corp of Engineers that the area for the campground expansion (just south of Rickeman Field in the old tractor pull area) will be removed from their wetland maps. The next step is for DGR to proceed with issuing a FEMA No-Rise Certificate for the area. Once the city receives that analysis, they will know how to proceed with elevations for utility placements and then installation can begin.

Weiland also reported that structural plans for the new comfort station. Administration is still waiting for the final electrical, plumbing, and mechanical plans for the new building. Once those plans are received, the city will be able to put the project out for bid.

“We should be able to go out to bid in the next week or two,” said Weiland.

Administration is still targeting to have the campground expansion and comfort station projects completed by the fall of 2017.

Dell Rapids Campground Reservation Changes

January 24, 2017 by Matt Larson, Big Sioux Media

Reservations for the Dell Rapids campground will be handled in a new way starting in 2017. The Dell Rapids City Council approved the booking of campsites through an online service called Camp Native. This is a South Dakota based company. They currently serve reservations for about 12,000 campgrounds on their website. The website to register is www.campnative.com.

City Administrator Justin Weiland said, “We’ve been thinking about this for several years and have done quite a bit of research…what the best method of doing this, what other campgrounds do. We do get this request about making it more convenient.”

Sites can still be reserved between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. at City Hall for those who may not have online access in which city administration can log onto the website and make the reservation through the website. One big change will be the removal of the self-registration by placing a payment in the campground’s dropbox. For those that enter the campground outside of city hours and don’t preregister either online or through City Hall, they will need to register online instead of using the dropbox. The city is planning to have free Wi-Fi available at the campground by the time it opens for the season to offset this change.

It was reported during the meeting that the majority of the weekends are usually filled by preregistrations in advance of the weekend, especially the big camping weekends. Moving to the website will allow people to now see what’s available real-time for open camping spots rather than having to contact City Hall.

The nightly rate for the campground was also raised from $15.00 to $18.00 by the City Council. The cancellation policy of No Cancellations was also amended during the meeting. That policy was removed and replaced with Camp Native’s cancellation policy that allows for any cancellations up to two weeks prior to the stay and a one-night penalty within the two week period. All the cancellations will be handled by the Camp Native website.

Other changes happening to the Dell Rapids Campground in 2017 are plans to construct a comfort station/bath house near Rickeman Field and also expand the campground to the former tractor pull area.

City Receives Grant for Campground Updates

November 28, 2016 by Matt Larson, Big Sioux Media

The City of Dell Rapids has received a $75,000 grant from the Land Water Conservation Fund through the State Game Fish and Parks Department. That grant will be dedicated towards the construction of a comfort station/shower house that will be near Rickeman Field.

“We went through the process of bidding that, and that came in a little bit higher I think than we had budgeted for this year. This goes a long way towards getting that building built though,” said City Administrator Justin Weiland during the Dell Rapids City Council regular meeting on Monday, November 21st.

Part of the grant funds will be used to expanding the campground in the former tractor pull area. The city has put both of these projects in the budget for 2017. Administration will start working on the planning phase of the projects to get the projects going in the spring of 2017 as soon as federal approval for the funding is received.

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