BY CHRIS LAWRENCE
CHARLESTON — The state in recent years has sunk a lot of money into the West Virginia State Park system and officials say its beginning to pay off.
Millions of dollars have been spent to catch up on long deferred maintenance projects as well as capital improvements. State Park officials detailed some of those expenditures to lawmakers during the recent interim committee meetings in Charleston.
“So far we’re at $87.1 million in special appropriation, grant funded, and parks bond and repair projects,” said Matt Yeager, deputy chief of Planning Engineering and Maintenance for the State Park system.
Most of the projects entail infrastructure repairs like sewer work, new roofs on park buildings, ADA compliance and HVAC systems, which have been in disrepair for a long time, but due to a lack of funding the work was delayed. Those kinds of projects don’t make for a big splash for promotion, but they are critical to the operations.
Interspersed were a few projects that will draw interest like a world-class mountain bike trail at Cacapon Resort State Park and the addition of new cabins at several parks along with creation of more campsites.
According to Yeager, those campsites are golden.
“Campground business is good. Throughout the State Parks the point is to get as many campsites in a park as you can because you’re going to fill them up on the weekend and that’s when you make your money,” he told members of the interim committee.
There have been times every cabin and campsite in the state were filled during the summer months.
Paul Redford, the deputy chief of operations, said those improvements are being noticed.
“Our customers who provide to us comments about their experience and their stay, overwhelmingly rate us ‘excellent.’” he said.
He added West Virginia State Parks ranked high in a number of categories nationally. For lodging revenue, ski slopes and swimming pools, West Virginia State Parks ranked No. 2 and for full service restaurants they ranked No. 4 in the country, according to Redford’s comments to the Legislature.
He added, the return on the state’s investments into the parks was huge.
“In Fiscal Year 2023, visitors to West Virginia State Parks spent about $483 million in the state, of that a little over 57%, or $279 million was generated from out-of-state visitation,” he said. “For every $1 of general tax revenue provided to the State Parks, $18.54 on average was generated in fresh money that likely would not have been there if it were not for our West Virginia State Park system.”
