by Kate Shunney
The principal owner of Scenic LLC, the company that was poised to develop acreage below the Panorama Overlook into a KOA campground for RVs in Great Cacapon told Morgan County Commissioners on July 17 that his company won’t carry the project forward.
Citing “shockingly bad timing for finances,” Aaron Bills told county officials that Scenic LLC is choosing to step away from the project.
“As a family, we’ve decided we can’t deliver on a KOA-branded campground,” Bills said on Wednesday, July 17 during the regularly scheduled commission meeting.
Bills came before the commission to discuss a potential option for the county to purchase the property, which they didn’t act on.
Prior to that meeting, Bills said he approached the West Virginia State Parks system and state officials, offering the property to the state as an add-on to Cacapon State Park. Scenic LLC owns land on both sides of Cacapon Road, one parcel of which touches Cacapon State Park at its northern tip.
“It would be an impressive add,” Bills said of the land’s potential for Cacapon State Park.
Last week, Bills shared with The Morgan Messenger a proposal document that his company sent to Tourism Commissioners Chelsea Ruby offering up the parcels, which total 448 acres.
In that proposal, Bills pointed out that his land would provide a direct connection between the northern tip of Cacapon State Park, which is landlocked, and Cacapon Road, with access to both the Cacapon River and the Potomac River.
Of the entire acreage, 40 acres of hayfield have already been permitted for a campground, Bill noted. He also pointed to the trail potential of adding his land to Cacapon Resort State Park (CRSP). 
“Significant investment has been made at CRSP to establish nationally recognized competitive/recreational bike trails. Imagine the impact of the ability to run trails down those 7 miles of mountain spine and then to the CRSP Two Rivers Extension which has river access, meadows, rock outcroppings, bowls, existing trails and other resources to anchor a new northern segment of the CRSP,” the Scenic LLC letter said.
At press time, the only response Bills had received to his proposal to the state was that they were not interested at this time.
The county, after a 35-minute closed Executive Session with Bills on July 17, took no action relating to the property.
Before heading into that closed session, Bills shared more details about his company’s options with the land.
He said there are numerous scenarios for the old Noland Farm along Cacapon Road at the base of the Cacapon Mountain. Those include development of the land as a campground by some other company. He said he has had discussions with other campground operators, who have said they would need to develop a “higher density” plan than the one Scenic LLC had approved by the county planners.
Bills said his company had been excited by the possible economic impact of a KOA campground on the local economy, and the “surge of revenue” it could have brought. He said he had a lot of support from the business community for that vision.
“We can’t make that happen,” Bills told commissioners. “It’s beyond our capacity to see that through.”
Following Bills’ announcement that Scenic LLC wouldn’t build the KOA campground, opponents of that project expressed relief.
Some full-time residents and second home owners in Great Cacapon especially had reservations about the traffic, water, wastewater and safety issues an RV campground would have brought to the land, and how it would have impacted the view seen from the Panorama Overlook at the top of Cacapon Mountain.
Bills has made it clear he doesn’t know what the final use of the land will be.
In their proposal to West Virginia officials, Bills wrote, “Our objectives are straightforward and simple: now that we have arrived at our family decision, we will be pursuing options to divest.”
Some ideas have included subdividing the land for multiple uses. Bills said his family would prefer a local option for harnessing the potential of the property.
“Our first best choice would be people most local to the property,” he said.
Bills told The Messenger his company is considering lots of possible options for the property,
“[W]e are still very early in the process of reviewing possibilities. There are many ways it could go. We have not listed the property for sale, but always open to a discussion – and there are several low key ones developing,” said in an email last week.
“We are not rushed, so will endeavor to make good choices both for the land, ourselves, and the community,” said Bills.
