Neighbours raise concerns over proposed South Shore RV park

Some residents living near Cherry Hill Beach on the province's South Shore say they have concerns about a 15-space RV park proposed for the area.

Steve Howe, who lives in one of the houses closest to the public beach, believes it could have impacts on the landscape. 

"It's almost completely undeveloped," Howe said. "It's just beautiful and it's pristine."

Howe said the small public parking lot for the beach fills up quickly in good weather, and cars have to park on the sides of Henry Conrad Road.

He thinks the impact from temporary visitors is different than that of 15 families staying all summer long. 

"People come down for a weekend and visit, or for a day, and then they go home. The RV park would just quadruple the population that's already there," Howe said. 

Howe has organized an online petition against the project and held a public meeting Friday evening at the community hall in nearby Voglers Cove. 

Retirement plans

Proponents of the planned RV park, Bob Clark and Dana Cole-Clark, already owned a summer home on Henry Conrad Road when they bought the wooded 2.5 hectare property in 2015. Their property ends about 150 metres before the Cherry Hill Beach parking lot and they say each of the 15 RV spots would be rented to a single tenant for the entire summer. 

"We really strongly feel that if people pay to come and stay in an RV park, that they're going to respect the beach as much as anybody else," Cole-Clark said.

The couple said the business is one part of their retirement plan when they transition away from their home-care business in the Annapolis Valley. 

Cole-Clark said both she and her husband are surprised at the vitriol their plan is provoking online, including false complaints the RV park will be "right on the beach."

'The land isn't right on the beach'

"The land isn't right on the beach. Some of the neighbours that built are closer to the beach than this RV park is going to be," she said. 

As a summer resident on the road, she said it's important the park retains the maximum number of trees. 

"We're trying to make it pleasing not only for us but for everybody else," she said.  

The Municipality of the District of Lunenburg said building permits are not required if no structures are built on the land. 

Cole-Clark said they already have the driveway and septic permits needed to move ahead. 

There are no zoning restrictions on any of the properties in the area, so the project could start at any time.

Expansion fear

Howe said he's worried the park could grow further once it's up and running. 

"Once they've got the first 15 pads in, they can add another 15 pads, and then another 15 pads, all staying under the development permit," Howe said. 

Clark and Cole-Clark say they can't promise to freeze their business forever, but expansion is not the plan. 

"It was never our intention to do that," Clark said. 

Howe said his main concern is preserving a fragile wild space he believes could be harmed by too much human traffic. 

"It has an immense amount of wildlife there, from herons to hawks to piping plovers to everything that's there you can imagine," Howe said. "Anybody can come down in the middle of the week around six o'clock, and you'll be the only person on that beach."