Green Park Campground operator terminating lease with province

The future of Green Park Campground in Port Hill near Tyne Valley, P.E.I., is in limbo.

Dale Wood says he and his wife have operated the park for the last eight years and now they are terminating their agreement with the province to run the park.

"We're just looking at new life changes," he said.

Wood said he and his wife have other growing companies and just bought another recently.

Green Park was hit hard by post-tropical storm Dorian this fall and the campground suffered "substantial damage."

"The tides came in fairly substantial and moved 14 cottages off the foundations and put them back, set them back into the woods. We had roughly 500 trees down," he said.

Dorian damage

Wood said he worked hard cleaning up the campground so whoever takes control won't have to deal with as much debris.

The storm caused significant losses for the campground, Wood said.

"We had to shut down quite a few weeks early."

I was down there all day yesterday wondering if I made the right decision or not.— Dale Wood

Wood said the trees that were brought down by the storm were not covered under insurance, which was "90 per cent of the damage."

"If we wouldn't have had the substantial damage we probably may have run it for probably another year," he said.

Wood said because of the damage caused by Dorian his insurance rates were going to triple.

Land owned by province

The parkland is owned by the province, Wood said.

"We hope it is going to go up for [request for proposals] with the province and a new entrepreneur will take it over," he said.

Wood said when his offer was accepted for another business, he had to cut one, and because he and his wife don't own the actual land the campground is operated on, he said he decided to drop it from their portfolio.

He said he's going to miss the park.

"I was down there all day yesterday wondering if I made the right decision or not," he said.

"It's been phenomenal. I mean we took the park from a pretty minimal amount of clientele to extremely busy, so we're pretty happy with that."

Rock the Boat

Green Park plays host to the annual Rock the Boat Music Festival, and while the campground offered 70 campsites to concertgoers, organizers said the festival has 200 sites it operates itself.

"There will still be camping for the festival," said Adam MacLennan, president of Rock the Boat. 

"We will be working to make sure that there is pretty near minimal effect for those wishing to camp and attend the festivities this year."

He said the festival has a 10-year lease on the land used for those 200 sites.

Wood said there are only a couple employees that may be affected, but they have other jobs, and the summer staff was mostly made up of students.

When reached by CBC, Tourism Minister Matthew MacKay said he would comment on the situation Friday.

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