Wal-Mart, local firm offer deal to Redmond RV park residents

Published 4:00 am Monday, March 27, 2006

REDMOND – Local developers and Wal-Mart have come up with a plan they hope will give the residents of the Highway 97 RV Park, near Maple Avenue and Fourth Street, some breathing room.

Residents are still expected to move out of the park by April 17 to make way for the development of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter, but if they move to the Sisters Inn and RV Park by Friday, about 35 percent of their rental space costs through May 20 will be covered.

Wal-Mart and DesertScape Management LLC made the offer to the residents of the park on March 17, four days after residents received their eviction notices, said James Lewis, director of development for DesertScape, which expects to finalize the sale of the RV park property to Wal-Mart sometime in the next month.

”They deserve help and if we can provide that and still do what we need to do to still run our business successfully then we are obligated to do it,” Lewis said Wednesday.

By the end of 2007, when the Wal-Mart Supercenter is expected to be completed, a road will run through the Wal-Mart complex where the Highway 97 RV Park now sits.

Residents were notified several months ago that they would have to leave the park as the Wal-Mart site developed, but they had no idea when that time would come, said Keith Stevens, 79, who has lived at the park for 14 years.

Then on March 13 residents received eviction notices giving them just a little more than a month to move out.

”It seemed like it was awful sudden,” said the elderly man Wednesday.

Wal-Mart and DesertScape hope the deal with Sisters RV Park will help ease that transition.

The deal is this: Sisters RV Park is offering spaces at $15.50, plus a 9 percent room tax. Wal-Mart and DesertScape will pick up $5.50 of that cost, plus the tax, as long as residents from the Highway 97 RV Park get there by Friday, according to a flier distributed to the residents of the park.

That means Highway 97 RV Park residents will pay just $10 per day for a space, which is slightly cheaper than the rate of $325 per month that the residents currently pay – provided they are there by Friday.

If, however, residents get to the park after Friday, they will have to pay the $15.50 plus tax on their own, but the $15.50 rate is a discounted one, said David Elliott, manager of the Sisters RV Park and Sisters mayor.

This opportunity is only available through May 20 because the Sisters RV Park is filled with prior reservations for much of the rest of the summer, Elliott said.

”It’s kind of an interim, to help the individuals find some more permanent spot to move their RVs to,” Elliott said.

Some residents of the Highway 97 RV Park have already moved to the RV park in Sisters, said Chris Mueller, who is the on-site manager of the Highway 97 RV Park.

But other than the one or two who have already gone to Sisters, Mueller doesn’t think many more will take advantage of the offer because it doesn’t give people long enough to figure out a more permanent solution.

Don Clark, 45, a long-term resident of the Highway 97 RV Park said the deal doesn’t work for him because he’d just have to pay to move his trailer again after living in Sisters for a month and a half.

”It’s not for me,” Clark said, though he still has no idea where he will be going after he leaves the park in the next few weeks.

In total eight of the roughly 60 people living at the park on March 13 have already left the Highway 97 RV Park as of Friday, Mueller said. Many have gone to the other RV parks in Central Oregon that contacted the park after hearing residents needed somewhere to go.

The outpouring from the community has been huge, Mueller said.

And Lewis, of DesertScape, said residents are welcome to contact DesertScape if they find themselves in a tight spot and need to ask for more help.

”As a local company we just think that … it’s just the right thing to do,” Lewis said.