Freedom—November 19, 2024—Freedom’s Planning Board is scheduled to review revised materials for Wabanaki Campground’s site plan application to expand six buildings and sell them as part of a conversion of the business to a 77-unit “membership campground.”

The Planning Board meeting is this Thursday, November 21, at 6:30 p.m. in Freedom Town Hall.

All municipal, state and federal approvals must be satisfied before the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau of the State Attorney General’s Office can rule on issuing a certificate of registration for the property’s conversion.

Campground owner/manager Mark Salvati’s application to the state was filed in January and remains pending. Fifteen of the 77 campsites appear to still be available for purchase, with the remainder reserved by campers who made a non-binding $5,000 down payment.

On the agenda for Thursday are six campground buildings called “hutnicks.” Site plan materials describe them as “Wooden tent, sinks are outside…not insulated or heated, and not connected to a septic system.”

Board hearings on expanding the “hutnicks” and making them permanent began in March and became contentious after campground agent Horizons Engineering asked the board to waive the town’s requirement for a 100-year stormwater management plan.

Faced with pushback on the waiver request, Bryan Berlind of Horizons told the board he would “hate to see” the property turned into a three or four lot residential subdivision, and campground owner/manager Salvati said he might have to withdraw the application.

The board denied the waiver request, but limited the scope of the runoff plan to the six “hutnicks” despite the recommendation of several board members to require a plan for the entire property because of the site’s population density and the “serious erosion” and “sand going into the lake” observed during the board’s April site visit.

The board also voted to obtain a third-party technical review, which is expected to be complete by this Thursday’s meeting.

Status of a 1970 Drainage System
Approvals by the town in 1970 and 1977 authorized a stormwater runoff system of ditches, catch basins and culverts to serve 16 single-family residential homes on the 10-acre site. In 2000, however, DES discovered there were 80 camping trailers on the property and ordered the business operation to close.

The property was allowed to reopen in 2001 after the state issued a campground permit, and the owners agreed to a subdivision plan that included constructing compliant sewage and water systems.

As reported by Ossipee Lake Alliance in August, the subdivision plan also required the removal of two of the “hutnicks,” noted as 3 and 6, as part of the construction of one of the new septic systems. The other four “hutnicks” were to be removed at a future date and turned into campsites. But the “hutnicks” remained in place.

In a letter to the Planning Board submitted with the revised site plan materials, Salvati conceded that the subdivision document required two of the “hutnicks” to be removed, but claimed the replacement of the other four structures with campsites was optional.

In a cover letter to the Planning Board for this week’s meeting, Horizons Engineering said the revised site plan materials contain a new runoff plan for the “hutnicks,” renumbered campsites, revised impermeable calculations, and notation of the locations of “future RVs and decks” for vacant sites.

Thursday’s meeting is a continuation of the Planning Board’s July 18 meeting, at which a member of the public, Susan Hoople, asked the board whether an approval of the “hutnick” expansions would constitute approval of the Horizons subdivision document that it’s based on.

“If you sign down here,” she said, pointing to the document, “this could get recorded at the Registry as a full subdivision plan and be submitted to the Attorney General’s office with their application as being approved by the town.”

Berlind of Horizons responded to say that the document is a commercial site plan application and not a subdivision application. Board Chair Linda Mailhot said she agreed and asked that the meeting move on, ending the discussion.

Nonetheless, the question of what signing the document would mean as a legal matter was also raised by board member Brian Taylor. Taylor said he too wondered if the board’s approval of the “hutnicks” could be construed by the state as approval of the underlying document.

Horizons says its document accurately reflects the 2001 state-approved subdivision plan, but Taylor noted that that the board has not made that determination.