[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to RV Park Boss, a podcast for RV park owners. I'm your host, Jason Lafferty. This is a show where we dive deep in the challenges and rewards of RV park ownership and some funny stories along the way. This podcast sponsored by RV Park Pros. 78% of all parks are self managed mom and pop operations. So aside for location, there's strong marketing, guest experience and proactive management which all are the keys to success and profitability for any park. If you're still trying to do this all by yourself, we do have a better way. RV Park Pros is a park management system that will help you maximize your occupancy and profits while optimizing your guest experience and retention, all without having to be involved in the day to day. To learn more about how we can streamline your operations, go to rvparkpros.com again that's rvparkpros.com and today's RV park boss is my friend Joey Locker, who is a developer and entrepreneur leading Locker's Southern View luxury motor coach resort, bringing a new level of luxury outdoor hospitality to Tennessee. Welcome to the show, sir. How we doing?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I'm doing well, man. I really appreciate the opportunity here. It's good to speak with other like minded people in the industry.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, likewise. Likewise for sure. I usually like to start off with a little question and then we'll kind of kick things off. If someone's looking to get into outdoor hospitality development, what's a little piece of advice that you could share that you kind of picked up on your journey?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Well, man, if I'm honest, I took a very orthodox way where I literally saw an opportunity in the market. Just kind of whenever I see something, I get obsessed in it. So I analyze and analyze it and at the when I was looking into this market, just doing research online, talk, talking to people, calling people, and then when I finally decided that this would work, I literally googled how to build an RV resort. Like that was one of my first moves that took me down the line and then that took me to consultants and people that were way smarter than me to kind of get me to where I'm at today.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I have a similar mind too. I started turning into a hobby. I was going to the beach in Texas and I was just looking at RV parks. I was an enthusiast and I was trying to get into real estate is investing. And so I was like, well, maybe I see these parks with 10 or 20 sites and maybe the side of the road, maybe I can just Start with that. And then it just turned into an obsession. And I just like, that's it. How does the water work? How does this, how much pressure do you need for this? How much does this cost? And then, you know, three years, four years later, it's just. That's, I mean, that's all I do or talk about.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: That's it, man.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: I, I think that's the way to do it. That's awesome.
That's awesome. So your, your resort in Tennessee, the Motor Coach Resort. What's, what's. Any updates on that one? So I've been following you.
Wow.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: So one of the big things with our project and I didn't go small when we started, I, I, the what the opening in the market I saw was luxury and saw that there were less than really 50 upscale RV resorts in the country. There wasn't one within 300 miles of Nashville.
So I went for the luxury side and went for the biggest that you could kind of make. I mean, sure, you could go bigger, but we went for a 72 acre piece of land with a half a mile riverfront, but about 25 minutes outside of Nashville. So going for that and going for the luxury space, you've, you've got a, I mean, it's a, it's a heavy lift. So the things that I kind of ran into were just the different regulations and all the different. It took me eight months just to get rezoning on the land. And then I started fighting the Army Corps and T deck. So our property has. Sits on the riverfront.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: What's tdec? Is that the water authority?
[00:03:46] Speaker B: So T DEC is Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation.
So their environmental side, just like the Army Corps is so with wetlands or endangered species, they all have a say so on this. So made it through local zoning approvals, we got state approvals with everything where we're at now is just hung up with the Army Corps.
And ours is specifically hung up because of a Supreme Court decision that came down, Sackett versus the EPA and has made some major changes in the waters of the United States. And we're kind of in the limbo of it. But I've now reached out to as many lawyers as possible. We have a path forward. We just have to figure out the next steps with that. On appealing our AJD that we did with Army Corps, but they believe with what's going on that they can get this overturned. It's just time and money.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Time and money for sure.
So what, what's like a little snapshot of, of what that, that what do you said versus epa. What was that?
[00:04:56] Speaker B: So the sack versus EPA is. So this was a, a family out in Idaho, I think is the. And I could be corrected on that. But a family basically wanted to build their dream home and got Tang Army Corps saying that they had jurisdiction over their land because of some tributaries that ran down to the navigable water.
And under that they said, no, you can't build this. And the families didn't agree with it. So they started fighting in court. And I think this actually started in like 2010 and followed it all the way up till basically 2023.
And it got overturned right when we got our wetland delineation done that they won that case. But it's set in limbo with some gray areas the last two years.
And once Trump's new guy came in, Lee Zeldin, he basically came in and said, hey, we're doing a complete overhaul of this and we're gonna re evaluate the, basically the federal government's jurisdiction on holding up developments.
So he overhauled it. They've changed some stuff.
They've overhauled it. There's some new rules that just came out July of this year that helped us. But the Nashville office didn't really abide by those new rules. So that's why we have to appeal and go through that process. But they also said in January 2026, one of the biggest changes in our, our history under the waters of the United States is coming.
So that's what I'm interested to see what happens because the rumors on the street are, one, we're going to see more development than we've ever seen in the United States because of this. And two, it's going to potentially hurt the environment, largely because the Army Corps and EPA are going to get out of the way and then they're going to give it all back to the states. And the states have determination of what they want to do. And what's crazy about that is the state and the Army Corps both have Clean Water act permits that you have to get through. They're the exact same permit. They just have two different groups that are jurisdict are looking at it. Tennessee has approved ours. They're like, hey, we're okay with this. The federal government's the one that's in the way now.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Yeah, man, that's crazy because they're. Because anytime you have government in any kind of gray area, they would just.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Be like, no, they don't want to answer questions. They, they, they're scared they're going to say something wrong and be Held against. Held against them. So one of the things that I was naive on in the beginning is just how all this, like the political side of this really kind of work.
And with the Army Corps, one of the big, we're always like, oh, it takes forever for the government to do anything, blah, blah, blah. So I asked, I was like, man, it takes y' all months to make a decision on stuff like what, what's going on? Like, you can't even reply to me in emails in a weekly time frame. It takes you a week to sometimes to respond.
One of the things I found out is, so whenever you get your Clean Water act permit, whenever the Army Corps approves it, what happens is that triggers two groups in the United States to two law groups, environmental lawyers that just automatically start suing people. They sue the Army Corps because they gave you a permit. And under that, they don't win everything, but when they do win, they win big.
So. And if they win, nothing happens to us as developers because we got our permit. You can't hold that against us, but they can hold it against the federal government and sue them.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: That's ridiculous.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Your permit has to be able to hold up in a court of law.
Well, my permit is just under 750 pages now.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: So. And that's not typical. It's like maybe a couple hundred pages.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So do you typically need a clean water permit if you're like adjacent to or touching Corps of Engineer land?
[00:08:46] Speaker B: No. The clean water permit really comes into effect of, of impacting wetlands. So we've got about just under, under 10 acres of wetland on the 72 acres we were proposing of 6.9 acres of that and offsetting it by buying mitigation credits. They say that's too much of impact that we need to redesign. Well, this is the fifth time we've redesigned this and looked at it. So it's like, guys, I don't want to keep doing this. And then you keep denying us and kind of stretching it out. We're two years.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: Tell me what you need. Yeah, tell me what you need. We'll do it.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: And that's the thing is they don't.
They will not tell you what they need. And I've even, I've even called these dudes and like, hey, can we have an off the record conversation of like, bro, what do you want? Like, just tell me. I'll figure out a way to make it work. And their response is, do not pack impact any of these wetlands. I was like, the wetlands that are on here are One man made. Or like four acres of them are man made because it used to be a duck blind back in the 80s and they, they dug trenches. There's cast iron pipe running out underneath it when it gets too high.
Like all these things show that it was a duck blind. But their response to me was, well, it's a wetland now. And I'm like, man, how does 40 years basically dictate when something becomes a wetland? The earth has been around for millions of years. Like, that is just a, it's an overstep.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: It's government logic. That's it.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: It's just, shoot. Yeah, punch me in the face, man. It's been fun, man. I, like, I'm learning a lot. And a lot of people like, yeah, it's a journey. And that's the part that I've had fun along the whole way. And I've been stressed. Like, I, my beard was not gray probably two years ago, so it's part of it.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: But yeah, but now you got stories like this and I just learned a bunch of shit just now, you know, like, so it's, it's, you get into.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: I love water. I love developing around water. Water's like, like I, I, I live by like the blue mind theory where it's a proven fact that if you're around water, you're just a happier person. Things are, your energy is higher, just happy around it. And I believe that. I love being on the water. My story started in because I wanted to, I wanted the lake life without the lake life cost. So I, my original idea was buy five acres, put a couple campers on there and go ahead and have the lake life and have our boats out there. But I was like, I don't have a million dollars for a house on this, so let's just have this little spot for the lake. We don't need much while we're out there. And then it kind of blossomed and I just did too much research that led to this luxury thing and a lot of people call it what the, the shiny object syndrome.
I had that when I did this because I saw this opportunity that no one else was willing to go after because it was so daunting. It only been done so many times, but I had the mentality of what it has been done before. So I'm not, I'm not really creating anything new. I just have to do what these people did.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Right? So I love that. Went from buying five acres, putting a couple of campers on there for a hobby, to a multi, multi million 40 million dollar resort.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: I'm a psychopath.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: But, yeah, and I got.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: I've been able to prove that with the team that I've built. The. The people that I've learned from, like, talking to guys like you. Like, I. When I met. When we finally met at the boardroom thing, I told you I'd been following you for a couple years at that point. Really kind of learning this.
And that's how I kind of got started in it, is just diving into these groups and learning from everyone willing to ask stupid questions and know that that stupid question was going to at least go to an answer of something that could benefit me. So I'd pick up the phone and call anybody and didn't care if they thought I was dumb or not, because I was going to do this regardless.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's half the reason I'm doing this podcast, is just talking to more people that you normally wouldn't talk to or. Or more often. And then you just. You just keep talking. The more you talk about the industry in, the more people you talk about, the more doors are going to open, more things you're going to learn, you know, or you might be able to connect with this person. You know, it's just. There's just nothing really bad about it, you know, it's just you.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Where's this thing at? I got a.
So we were at that. The boardroom mastermind thing, and on that little coin they gave us.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: It has a saying on it that I kind of held in my mind before this, which was wild to see this, where it says pressure is. Is my privilege. Where, like, if you're not. If you don't have pressure on you, like, are you needed? Like, does someone need you if you're not being pressured to do something? And I love that. I love the feeling of pressure because it's. It terrifies you a little bit. And I think something that scares you puts a little bit more effort into it if you can manage the stress.
Like, that's the key. Like, I didn't do well during that. I didn't do. I didn't do well. Managing stress through some of these, like, pivotal moments where, man, I was maybe four hours of sleep a night and working 20 hours, but at the same time, I look back in that, I was like, man, that's kind of fun. Like, I've never been challenged like that in my life.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.
I can relate a little bit with that. Had to throw a few Hail Marys to keep going where I'm at.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Yeah, man. I, I mean, on another time when we get back together, I'll tell you about the like Christmas, man. Like one of the first years when I was putting this together. Like Christmas morning come up, got a text message saying that I needed to come up with like $400,000 by the end of the week. And I was like, what.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Christmas to you, dude?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: I'm sitting at the, at my father in law's kitchen table. I'm like, what? Like this is. Well, what a Christmas. But it was, I got through it. But it was those kind of moments or when the army corps was like, yeah, you need to go do a, a muscle survey. You need to go do a bat survey. And I'm like, what, what is this? Oh, there's a, there's a salamander out there that is endangered that you need to go look after. And I was like, this salamander's found all over the state. What do you mean it's endangered? You guys keep running into it. Is it really endangered if you keep running into it?
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah. That's funny.
That's funny. So, so switching gears a little bit on once you have this park opened, I like how you touched or mentioned that.
So like your luxury motor coaches are typically your white collar, you know, type of demographics versus your campers. And fifth bills are often more, more blue collar. I never really thought about it because to me it's like I'm going to get a diesel pusher pretty soon and I, I see myself both as white collar and blue collar. But, but I always thought that was interesting.
So can you, can you elaborate a little bit more on like how you, how you kind of found that or just kind of realized that?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it was, it was when I started looking into the fact that people were actually buying RV lots, that's really what opened it up. Because like I grew up camping, I grew up all these things and I knew you could do, you could rent it for the weekend, you could rent it for a month, you could rent it for a year. But people actually buying them was something I didn't know even existed. And 2020, when this first could come up.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Yeah, one in Arizona, one in Florida, one in the mountain, Tennessee, all over.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Like, the first one that, that I saw was Las Vegas Motor Coach Resort because we got a friend's family that owns a couple lots in there. And like, oh yeah, we, our first one was like 220,000. And then we bought another one for like 380. And I was just like, what? That doesn't make any sense. Like, this is mindboggling. So you just go into the obsession of it, and then when you start looking into the demographics of. Of it, it is, man, I hope some people hate this word, but, like, they're just rich rednecks. That's what it was like. A lot of these guys were builders and investors and whatnot. And it is white collar because typically are the business owners and whatnot. But a lot of these guys come from the trades. I mean, some of the. The top people I know are builders and developers that are in this kind of space with it. So you saw the. It was mostly the 55 and up, because affluent, you've got enough money to drop a man a couple million on some of these motor coaches that they have out there. I mean, they're. The. One of the first ones that really opened my eyes was one that was $7.4 million because it had a Bugatti that came out from underneath it. The guy was like. When he pointed it out, I was like, man, this is 7.4 million. Like, doesn't make any sense. He goes, well, he goes, you haven't seen anything yet. I was like, man, I toured this whole thing. Like, this ain't. This ain't that great. He goes, come with me. We walked off the bus. He hits a button, and a Bugatti comes out from underneath it. And he goes, the Bugatti's 4 million. The coach is 3.4. And I was like, dude, who.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: What.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Who are these people? Like, what is this?
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, my favorite thing is. Yeah, well, real quick is my favorite thing is when I go talk to somebody about RV parks, like, oh, like mobile home parks. I'm like, come on.
I'm like, there's. There's levels to this shit, dude.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: There. That's it. But that's also one of the key points of getting into this is one the biggest headache. One of the biggest headaches I had in the first eight months was really showing people what the.
The capabilities of this sector was. Because everyone said this was going to be a trailer park. It was going to be just run down all this. Like, you guys, I was like, y' all don't understand what we're actually trying to build. So it wasn't until us put renderings together and really start. I. Man, the amount of times I got yelled at on the Internet just by putting out data and whatnot was some of the craziest stuff was said. But that was what opened people's eyes to what we were actually building. And when they would come to one of the county meetings, okay, he's going to build a, a mobile home park. And this is just going to be manufactured homes and trailers and sex offenders.
The commissioners are like, no, this. He's already shown us what he's actually going to be building. You're just, you're now lying.
So the man, the community aspect of even getting started is fun because you need to build a picture. You need to understand where they're coming from. Because I didn't know this higher echelon existed in 2020. So of course they're not going to know.
So building that picture with them finally got everyone on board. Not everyone got a majority on board to support us.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean a play a place like that is going to help the local restaurants, it's going to help the local stores. It's just, I mean like rules.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Like, I mean we, we'll be bringing in a million plus just in tax revenue just from our project. Not to mention the, the spending power that others will be spending in the area because we're bringing in affluent people. Like you typically don't have just anybody driving a 45 foot Prevost like that's typically an affluent buyer that is looking to spend money. They're not hoarding their money. They want to, they, they're going to come there, they're going to park their rig, hopefully have their tow rig with them as well, and then go out and hang out in the community. They can go into Nashville. That's why we did it so close. But a lot of these people like that small community stuff. They like those little restaurants. But have the option to go into Nashville and get as crazy as you want.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Right?
Right.
That's awesome, man. Well, I definitely look forward to the day that you open and I'm gonna.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Same here, brother.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: I'll be showing up and hopefully I'll have a diesel pusher by then. There you go.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: Looking forward to it.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Awesome, man. Well, I think that's a good point to wrap it up.
If folks want to catch up with you, what's a good way that they can do?
[00:20:30] Speaker B: So man, I feel free to reach out social media.
I'm on Facebook, Instagram and I just started a tick tock.
I've had to make myself do it to get more branding out there and more marketing and just kind of tell. Tell more stories like this to people that want to get into this.
Because I have multiple people that I just talk to about it because I love talking about this. I love just throwing out ideas. If somebody wants to do this, I'm down to talk about it because we can. I could talk about this for hours. And one of the big things I encourage everyone to do is pick up the phone and call someone that's doing what you're doing and ask them questions. That was the, the eye opening moment for me was being able to talk to people who've done it and be like, man, I really can do this.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I definitely agree with that. Just, just keep calling folks, you know, that's it.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: They can help. My email is just Joey Locker, gmail.com first last name. So very easy and straightforward. If anybody wants to send me an email to set up a time to chat.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate your time. Enjoyed the conversation.
Awesome. It's good little nuggets there. Now I know a little bit more about dealing with some wetland stuff.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Hey, we can talk deeper into it if we want to next time.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Yes, sir. Awesome listening. If you guys own at least one park and want to be on a Future episode of RV Park Boss, you can apply
[email protected] and that'll do it for this one. Thanks, man. Awesome. Thanks, sir. Yes, sir.
