Plans to expand certain amenities within Chewacla State Park are on the horizon as the park adjusts to recent entrance and service fee changes and prepares to switch over to a more modern campground and cabin reservation system.
Essentially, there's a lot going on at Chewacla.
The state park, which offers features like hiking trails, a geocaching course and new mountain bike trails, increased its entrance fees by $1 at the beginning of March. The increase, which was implemented in all Alabama state parks, was in response to rising park costs, such as increased health insurance rates for employees and increased utility costs, for example. Fees did not increase for children or seniors.
While these increased service fees help the park catch up to current costs, Alabama State Parks Director Greg Lein said they will also help make the parks stronger. The user fees are the primary source of revenue for the state parks.
"We try to educate the public that the state park system largely operates off user fees," Lein said. "Two years ago, we polled our customers ... because we heard that they think the state parks system is largely paid for through taxes."
Lein said that 70 percent of those polled believed that it was a tax-supported system.
The entrance fees and other service fees collected in Alabama's parks are actually the main source of funding — helping to bring new activities and expansions to the parks.
One plan in the works for Chewacla State Park is to expand the number of campground lots and lodging cabins, according to park manager O'Dell Banks.
"Currently we have six — two large cabins and four small cabins," Banks said. "I'd like to see something like what they call a chalet — it would hold 10 to 12 people in it."
At this time the largest cabins have a capacity of six people, which Banks says is especially limiting to larger families or people who are planning a trip with extended family.
As far as camp sites, Chewacla currently has 36 lots, but Banks would like to expand to over 50.
Lein said plans have been drawn up and costs estimated for these expansion projects, but the question right now is funding.
"All of that relates back to the availability of funding to implement those new conveniences," Lein said. "That could be a FY 2016 (project) or it might be later than that. It's just a matter of funding, and we're exploring that, but that question has not been resolved."
As soon as late May or early June, the park will be rolling out its new reservation system — where campers can reserve a specific camp site online.
"We hear this a lot, people want to see a reservation system where you can do what people call 'site-specific' reservations," Lein said. "In other words, you could go online, and if your favorite campsite was 27, you could see whether that's open or not and specifically book site 27. We've not had that sort of system in the past."
Banks said the new system will make things a lot easier for park staff, and for park visitors.
The new reservation system is just one example of what citizens will be getting out of the increased service fees, Lein said.
"We have modified a software to do this, and to maintain that system, there's a cost to that," he said. "But it's a positive thing because that change is something people have asked for."
A newer category of activities — aerial adventures — are popping up in state parks across Alabama. So far, four state parks have added a type of zipline trail, and some have incorporated cable skiing, which is like water skiing except the person skiing is pulled by a cable, not a boat.
"Those are basically what I think of as adventure-related or eco-tourism-related activities, and that's really what we're focusing on right now so that the public has more of those modern-type activities available in the parks," Lein said. "We might be able to add that to Chewacla."
That is, if a private company is willing to put those activities here. According to Lein, if a private business wanted to set up one of these operations, it would partner with Alabama State Parks to provide the activity within one of the parks.
The state parks would get a percentage of the revenue as compensation for allowing the company to use the park for their business.
Lein said geocaching is another example of a modern activity that families like to do — one that Chewacla already has in place.
"Dell has a great course out there at Chewacla; it's very well-liked," Lein said. "That's another example of us trying to do things that are more in step with the times."
New bike trails weave throughout Chewacla State Park, providing over 10 miles of paths for mountain bikers.
Plans to expand certain amenities within Chewacla State Park are on the horizon as the park adjusts to recent entrance and service fee changes and prepares to switch over to a more modern campground and cabin reservation system.
Comments(0)