USDA REAP Feasibility Study Case Study: An Energy Retrofit at an 81-Site Northwoods Campground in Woodruff, Wisconsin

An 81-site seasonal campground on 15.5 acres with 5 undeveloped acres at 11200 Fox Fire Road in Woodruff, Oneida County, Wisconsin, in the Minocqua lake region, open May 1 to October 15, marketed at $1,400,000 on $100,000 of stated cash flow, with 55 full-hookup sites, 20 water-and-electric sites, 6 primitive sites and a cabin, served by two wells and eight septic systems, and a 2027 rate card that prices below the lakeside competitor a few miles away. Underwritten as a conventional acquisition at 65 percent of price with a USDA Rural Energy for America Program guaranteed loan funding 75 percent of a $155,000 energy retrofit, a 40-kilowatt solar array and efficiency measures, at a total project cost of $1,670,000 and $643,750 of equity. The campground earns 48 percent of its revenue from stays of 30 days or less and is therefore not an SBA-eligible business, which is why the structure is conventional and REAP. With the rate card reset toward the competitor's, electric sub-metered to the seasonal sites and the retrofit in service, the campground covers at 1.36x in Year 3 and 1.44x in Year 5, with the REAP grant carried as an upside only while the agency's grant window is closed. Determination: feasible with conditions.

Model study prepared by MMCG Invest | Michal Mohelsky, J.D., FMVA | October 2, 2026

MMCG concludes that the acquisition and energy retrofit of Fox Fire Campground in Woodruff, Wisconsin is feasible with conditions under a conventional acquisition loan and a USDA Rural Energy for America Program guaranteed loan. The campground's stated cash flow of $100,000 on an asking price of $1,400,000 is a 7.1 percent return before debt service and owner labor, below the 9.00 percent Newmark prints for Class C parks, which values the park as it operates at about $1,120,000; the purchase pencils only on the three changes the study models. The first is the rate card, which the operator's own 2027 sheet sets at $44 to $52 nightly for a full-hookup site and $2,750 to $3,705 for a seasonal site against the lakeside competitor's published $61 nightly and $3,900 seasonal plus separately billed electric; the study moves the subject's nightly rate to $56 and its seasonal rate to $3,750 by Year 3, still under the competitor's. The second is sub-metering, which bills the 40 seasonal sites for the electricity they use, as the competitor already does, and recovers about $17,000 a year that the subject's bundled seasonal fee now absorbs. The third is the retrofit: a 40-kilowatt solar array sized to the park's own seasonal load under a utility net metering tariff that caps the program at 20 kilowatts and credits exports at about 4.7 cents, and efficiency measures in the bathhouses and lighting, which together cut the park's electric bill by about $13,700 a year at a cost of $155,000.

On those changes the campground earns $387,131 in Year 3 and a net operating income of $149,923, covers $104,271 of combined debt service at 1.36x in Year 3 and 1.44x in Year 5, and funds the Year 1 shortfall of $28,515 from a $38,800 reserve. The structure is conventional and REAP rather than SBA because the campground earns about 48 percent of its revenue from stays of 30 days or less, two points short of the more-than-50-percent test that SOP 50 10 8 applies to campgrounds; seasonal sites sold for the whole May-to-October season are stays over 30 days, and the park's product is built on them. The REAP grant, which would fund 25 percent of the solar array and 50 percent of the efficiency measures, about $47,500, is carried as an upside only, because the agency is not accepting grant applications in 2026 while it revises the program rule and guaranteed loans continue. The determination is conditioned on the seller's trailing statements and electric bills, the rate card and seasonal contracts reset as modeled before the 2027 season sells, the utility's interconnection approval, the REAP technical report and energy audit, and a bound insurance quote.

This is an MMCG model study: a complete feasibility analysis performed on a real, publicly marketed campground using public data, prepared to show conventional lenders, REAP lenders and buyers how MMCG underwrites a small seasonal campground whose value is in its rate card and its utility bill, why the SBA test excludes it, and how the REAP guaranteed loan is used while the grant window is closed. It is not a client engagement, MMCG has no relationship with the seller, the listing broker or any prospective buyer, and the analysis does not represent an offer, an appraisal, a business valuation or a recommendation to buy the campground. Figures drawn from the listing, the operator's own 2027 rate sheet and rules, the competitor's own website, the Energy Information Administration, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin and USDA Rural Development are identified as such. Figures labeled MMCG assumption are underwriting inputs set by MMCG from industry benchmarks, and items that could not be verified from a primary source at the study date are listed in the Conditions and Limitations section rather than estimated silently. In particular, the seller's financial statements, electric bills and site-night data, the current listing status, the array's modeled output from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's PVWatts calculator, the serving utility's current parallel generation tariff, and the rates of the other private campgrounds in the Minocqua area from their own websites were not confirmed from primary sources at the study date and are carried as stated assumptions.

The Project will operate as a seasonal family campground on 15.5 acres at 11200 Fox Fire Road in Woodruff, Oneida County, Wisconsin, in the Minocqua and Woodruff lake district of the Northwoods, open from May 1 to October 15 with a year-round fitness center. The physical program comprises the existing 81 sites, 55 of them full-hookup sites with 30- and 50-amp service, 20 water-and-electric sites and 6 primitive sites, of which 40 are sold as seasonal sites for the whole season and 41 are held for nightly and weekly guests, together with one sleeping cabin, four bathrooms, a laundry, a camp store and office, a swimming beach and boat launch on the lake, and 5 undeveloped acres reserved for expansion, all served by two wells and eight septic systems. The retrofit adds a 40-kilowatt ground-mount solar array on the south-facing open ground beside the bathhouse, LED lighting throughout, heat pump water heaters in the bathhouses and controls on the bathhouse heating, and electric sub-meters on the 40 seasonal sites. The campground will be owner-operated with a resident owner couple and seasonal staff of three in the peak months, with the office staffed from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in season, and every nightly and weekly site will carry a 14-day maximum stay while the seasonal sites are sold on the operator's standard seasonal agreement, which Wisconsin's campground statute exempts from residential landlord-tenant law. The buyer will hold the land, improvements and business in a single operating entity that is the conventional borrower and the REAP borrower, with the buyer's principals providing the guarantees the lenders require. The Project is positioned a step below the lakeside competitor, at $56 nightly and $3,750 for a seasonal site by Year 3 against the competitor's $61 and $3,900 plus electric, as the family campground on the Woodruff side of the lake district with the only new solar-powered bathhouses in it.

Marketing and Sales Strategy

The park's revenue is sold a season ahead and the reset begins with the seasonal renewals. The operator's 2027 rules already offer an early-renewal discount on seasonal sites, and the buyer sells the 2028 season from September 2027 at the new seasonal rate with electric metered separately, which the competitor's seasonal guests already accept. The primary channel for the nightly guest is the Minocqua lake district itself, which draws the Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago drive markets through the summer, and the park is listed on the commercial reservation platforms and the two membership directories. The second channel is the lake: the swimming beach and boat launch are the product, and the park markets to the fishing and boating guest through the regional guides and the state's fishing pages. The third channel is the fall color season, which the October 15 close captures, and the park prices its last three weeks at the summer rate. Retention runs through the seasonal base, which returns at rates above 90 percent in the Northwoods, and through a returning-guest program for the nightly guest.

Amenities

The campground occupies 15.5 acres with 5 additional undeveloped acres at 11200 Fox Fire Road in Woodruff, an unincorporated community of about 2,000 residents in Oneida County in north-central Wisconsin, adjoining Minocqua and the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest, in the lake district that is the Northwoods' principal summer destination. The listing describes 81 sites, four bathrooms, a laundry, eight septic systems, two wells and a year-round fitness center, and the operator's own site describes the lake frontage, the beach and the boat launch. Oneida County is rural under the program's threshold on any reading, with a county population near 38,000 and no city over 50,000 within 150 miles, which qualifies the park for REAP as a rural small business.

The demand that reaches the site is the lake district's. Minocqua and Woodruff are a drive destination for the Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago metropolitan areas, four to six hours south, with a summer that runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day and a shoulder that the fall color and the fishing seasons extend; the state forest's own campgrounds, Musky Lake at 81 non-electric sites and Crystal Lake at about 100 sites, fill on reservation in season and their overflow is the private parks' base. The park's season of May 1 to October 15 matches the competitor's exactly and matches the solar resource: the array produces the bulk of its annual output in the months the park operates, which is what makes self-consumption rather than export the economic basis of the retrofit.

The campground is an existing, licensed Wisconsin campground and the acquisition requires no entitlement. Wisconsin licenses campgrounds through the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection under Chapter ATCP 79, and the license transfers to the buyer; the Oneida County zoning for the parcel and the standards for the 5-acre expansion were not retrieved at the study date and the expansion is not in the model. The solar array is an accessory use on the park's own land and is sized under the utility's net metering threshold; the utility's interconnection approval is a condition.

Wisconsin's tenancy framework is favorable and is written into the operator's own rules. Section 704.96 of the Wisconsin Statutes, created by 2025 Wisconsin Act 29, exempts a licensed campground from the residential landlord-tenant chapter, and the operator's 2027 rules, updated September 14, 2026, state the exemption; a seasonal guest on a seasonal agreement is a licensee, not a tenant, and the park's product carries no residential tenancy risk. That is a different question from SBA's: the seasonal guest is a licensee under state law and a stay over 30 days under SOP 50 10 8, and the two findings coexist.

The park is on two wells and eight septic systems, which is standard for the Northwoods and carries the monitoring of a transient non-community water system under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Department of Natural Resources' rules; the systems' condition is part of the property condition assessment the buyer commissions. Electric service is from Wisconsin Public Service, on whose territory the lakeside competitor bills its seasonal guests separately, and the study carries the park's electric bill at $46,000 a year as an MMCG assumption against a Wisconsin commercial average of 13.93 cents per kilowatt-hour in July 2026, up 4.2 percent in a year on the Energy Information Administration's series; the seller's bills are the first condition and the single figure on which the retrofit's economics turn.

Property tax is carried at $9,500 in Year 1, or $117 per site, as an MMCG assumption reflecting Oneida County's rates on a campground assessed well below the contract price, escalating 2 percent per year. Wisconsin's room tax applies to the park's nightly stays where the municipality has adopted it and is collected from the guest.

The trade area for a Northwoods campground is the southern metropolitan areas, not the county. Oneida County's roughly 38,000 residents supply the park's three seasonal positions and little of its demand; the guest is the Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago household on a summer lake trip, and the seasonal site is the second home of a family that cannot afford a cabin on a Minocqua lake. The lake district's demand is counted through the state forest's reservation pressure, the competitor's published rates and the subject's own 40 seasonal sites, which the listing describes as sold.

The demand model counts the subject's own book and the competitor's card. The park's 40 seasonal sites are sold at 95 percent on the seller's figures and carry to 98 percent on the reset, because the seasonal demand in the Woodruff lake district exceeds the private supply and the competitor's seasonal waiting list is its own evidence; the 41 nightly and weekly sites are carried at 44 percent occupancy across the 168-night season in Year 1, rising to 48 percent at stabilization, which is below the 68 percent full-hookup benchmark for the months a park is open because the subject's nightly product includes water-and-electric and primitive sites and because the Northwoods' nightly season is front-loaded into July and August. The subject is not adding supply; the penetration question is whether the nightly guest and the seasonal family will pay the reset rates, and the competitor's card answers it.

MMCG identified five campgrounds in the Woodruff and Minocqua lake district. The subject and one private competitor publish rate cards on their own websites and are quoted; the state forest campgrounds publish fees through the state's reservation system; one private park was located through an aggregator and is flagged.

Competitor Number 1 Patricia Lake Campground This campground is located at 8508 Camp Pinemere Road, Minocqua, WI 54548 and is listed by aggregators at about 100 sites. Its own website publishes full-hookup and lakeview water-and-electric sites from $61 per night and $395 per week, and seasonal sites from $3,900 plus tax with electric billed separately by Wisconsin Public Service on 100-amp service, open May 1 to October 15. It is the subject's direct comparable and its published card sets the subject's reset.

Competitor Number 2 Indian Shores Camping Resort This resort is located in Woodruff, WI and is listed by an aggregator. Its site count, rates and season were not retrieved from its own website at the study date.

Competitor Number 3 Musky Lake Campground, Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest This state forest campground is located on County Highway N near Boulder Junction and holds 81 non-electric sites at the Department of Natural Resources' state forest fees. It is the state's own supply and competes for the tent and small-trailer guest.

Competitor Number 4 Crystal Lake Campground, Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest This state forest campground is located at 8770 County Road J, Woodruff, WI and holds about 100 sites at the Department of Natural Resources' fees. It is four miles from the subject and its reservation pressure in July and August is the subject's overflow.

Competitor Number 5 Fox Fire Campground (subject) This campground is located at 11200 Fox Fire Road, Woodruff, WI 54568. Its own 2027 rate sheet publishes daily full-hookup and lakeside sites at $44 weekdays, $48 weekends and $52 holidays, lakefront sites at $51 to $59, primitive sites at $29 to $37, a flat off-season rate of $35, monthly water-and-electric sites at $910 and $1,380 lakeside, seasonal sites at $2,750 to $3,705 with early-renewal rates of $2,389 to $3,430, and a $550 liveaboard surcharge. Its daily rate is $17 under the competitor's and its seasonal rate is $195 under before electric.

The other private campgrounds of the Minocqua area were not retrieved, and no new campground approved or under construction in Oneida County was identified at the study date.

The subject's reset is set against the one published private card. The nightly full-hookup rate moves from the operator's $44 to $52 to $50 in Year 1 and $56 by Year 3, still $5 under Patricia Lake's $61 for a park with a smaller amenity set and gravel roads; the seasonal rate moves from $2,750 to $3,705 to $3,400 in Year 1 and $3,750 by Year 3 against Patricia Lake's $3,900, with electric sub-metered and billed to the seasonal guest at cost from Year 2, which recovers about $420 per seasonal site a year and matches the competitor's practice. Rates escalate 3 percent per year from Year 3, and other income, which comprises the store, firewood, boat and bike rentals and the cabin, is carried at the seller's level with 3 percent growth.

The SBA question is answered by the product. Seasonal sites sold for the May-to-October season are stays over 30 days, and at 40 of 81 sites and about 42 percent of revenue including the metered electric, they hold the transient share at about 48 percent; a park that wanted an SBA loan would have to convert seasonal sites to nightly sites, which would cut its revenue and its stability to gain two points on a test, and the study does not recommend it.

The acquisition closes before the 2027 season with the seller's seasonal contracts in place, the retrofit is installed in the winter of 2027 to 2028, and the reset applies from the 2028 season.

The seller's year is modeled at $293,244 of revenue: 40 seasonal sites at $3,100 average at 95 percent, 41 nightly sites at $47 and 44 percent over 168 nights, the cabin at $8,000 and other income at $25,000, which with electric at $46,000 and other expenses at 50 percent of revenue produces $100,622, in line with the listing's stated $100,000 of cash flow.

The retrofit is sized to the park's own load and to the utility's tariff, not to the roof.

Wisconsin Public Service's net metering applies to systems up to 20 kilowatts, and generation above that threshold is credited at a parallel generation rate that blends 45 percent of the on-peak rate and 55 percent of the off-peak rate plus a transmission credit, about 4.7 cents per kilowatt-hour on the published tariff values, against a commercial retail rate of 13.93 cents; the Public Service Commission reopened its net metering investigation in docket 5-EI-157 in March 2024, and the tariff values are to be confirmed at interconnection. The economics therefore depend on self-consumption. A 40-kilowatt array in northern Wisconsin produces about 1,250 kilowatt-hours per kilowatt per year on the regional planning range, or about 50,000 kilowatt-hours, and because the park's load and the array's output both peak from May to September, the study carries 85 percent self-consumed at the retail rate and 15 percent exported at the parallel generation rate, for savings of about $6,300 a year; the PVWatts run for the site is a condition and will refine the figure. The installed cost is carried at $3.00 per watt, inside the $2.50 to $4.30 per watt range that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reports for small non-residential systems, or $120,000.

The efficiency measures are the better investment per dollar. LED lighting throughout the park, heat pump water heaters replacing electric resistance heaters in the four bathrooms, and controls on the bathhouse heating are carried at $35,000 and at savings of about $7,400 a year, a five-year simple payback, on the energy audit that REAP requires for efficiency improvements; the audit is a condition. Sub-metering the 40 seasonal sites at $18,000 is not an energy measure and is not REAP-eligible, but it is the largest single change to the park's electric economics: it moves about $17,000 a year of seasonal consumption from the park's bill to the seasonal guest's, as the competitor already does, and it ends the park's exposure to the liveaboard seasonal guest who runs air conditioning on a bundled fee.

Together the solar array and the efficiency measures cut the park's electric bill from $46,000 to about $33,700 in Year 2, and the sub-metering recovers a further $16,800 as revenue. The REAP grant, at 25 percent of the array and 50 percent of the efficiency measures, would fund $47,500 of the $155,000 and cut the REAP loan to $68,750; it is carried as an upside in the sensitivity table and not in the base case.

Location: 11200 Fox Fire Road, Woodruff, WI 54568 Sites: 81

Source: Marshall & Swift CoreLogic, MMCG

Total project cost of $20,617 per site is a going-concern price plus a retrofit, and the price itself is the risk: at $17,284 per site on $100,000 of cash flow the park is bought at a 7.1 percent return, which is why the study's base case assumes the reset and the retrofit and why the leverage is held at 65 percent. The reserve of $38,800 funds the Year 1 shortfall of $28,515 with $10,000 of margin, which is thin and deliberate, because the seller's seasonal contracts carry the first season and the buyer's equity is the real cushion.

Loan Assumptions

The acquisition loan is held at 65 percent of price because the park's as-operated cash flow does not support 70 percent at 1.25x: at $100,622 of net operating income and $8,100 of reserves, a $980,000 loan at the same rate would cover at 0.94x before the reset. The REAP loan finances 75 percent of the eligible retrofit, the program's maximum, with the sub-metering excluded as ineligible and funded from equity.

The campground is a rural small business in an eligible rural area, Woodruff and Oneida County being far under the program's population thresholds, and the solar array is a renewable energy system and the lighting, water heating and controls are energy efficiency improvements eligible under the Rural Energy for America Program. The guaranteed loan may fund up to 75 percent of total eligible project cost with an 80 percent guarantee; the study carries $116,250 against $155,000. A renewable energy system of the array's size requires a technical report, and the efficiency improvements require an energy audit or assessment, both of which are conditions; the application must be complete before construction begins. USDA Rural Development's Wisconsin office states that the agency is not accepting REAP grant applications while guaranteed loan applications may be submitted, and the April 15, 2026 Federal Register notice withdrew the grant funding opportunity; the grant is therefore an upside only. The program's precedents are the campground awards the agency has published, including a $20,000 grant to Harmony Park in Clarks Grove, Minnesota in 2024 for a 39-kilowatt array expected to replace 52,300 kilowatt-hours and save $5,700 a year, which is the same sizing logic the study applies.

The conventional loan is outside USDA's programs, and the campground is outside SBA's: at 48 percent of revenue from stays of 30 days or less it fails the more-than-50-percent test of SOP 50 10 8 and no SBA structure is available without changing the product.

The USDA feasibility requirements applied in this study are those of 7 CFR Part 5001.

The Year 3 operating budget with the reset and the retrofit in service is built by line for an owner-operated 81-site seasonal campground in the Northwoods.

The expense ratio of 61.3 percent is above the 54 to 56 percent MMCG carries for a stabilized park from Newmark's expense analysis because a 168-night season carries twelve months of fixed cost, and because the owner couple's draw is carried in payroll at $60,000 as a real cost rather than left out as it is in many small-park listings; the seller's stated cash flow of $100,000 is before owner labor on the listing's conventions, and the study's Year 1 net operating income of $83,856 after the draw is the honest comparison. Electric at 9.0 percent of revenue after the retrofit compares with 14.5 percent in the Newmark average and 15.7 percent in the seller's year.

Year 1 runs on the seller's seasonal contracts at the old bundled rate with the retrofit not yet in service, and its shortfall is funded from the reserve. The reset and the retrofit apply from Year 2, when operating expenses fall while revenue rises, and the park covers at 1.28x in Year 2 and 1.44x by Year 5. The Year 3 yield on total project cost of 9.0 percent sits at Newmark's 9.00 percent Class C capitalization rate, which values the park after the reset at about $1,670,000, equal to its cost; the retrofit and the reset earn back the premium the buyer pays over the as-operated value.

At Year 3 rates, the park's fixed operating cost is $212,403 including the replacement reserve and the post-retrofit electric bill, and its variable cost is 8.5 percent of revenue for marketing, reservation and administrative lines. Because a seasonal campground's revenue is sold by the site and the season rather than by the night, break-even is stated as revenue against the Year 3 forecast of $387,131.

The 1.25x threshold sits 3.2 percent under the forecast and the 1.0x threshold 10.6 percent under it, which is the credit fact of a small seasonal park bought at a full price: the margin is the reset, and the lender's protection is the 38.5 percent equity.

The park holds coverage above 1.0x in every case including the combined revenue decline, and above 1.25x only in the base case, the electric and rate cases and the grant case. The last row is the determination's premise: at the seller's results and conventional leverage, the park does not cover, and the purchase is a reset and retrofit, not a stabilized acquisition.

The determination of feasible with conditions is subject to the following conditions precedent:

The following items could not be verified from a primary source at the study date and are disclosed: the seller's financial statements, electric bills and site-night data, in place of which the study carries a modeled seller's year reconciled to the listing's stated $100,000 of cash flow; the current listing status and asking price as of October 2, 2026, which the business brokerage platform no longer displayed when checked; the array's output, carried from a regional planning range pending the PVWatts run; Wisconsin Public Service's current parallel generation tariff values; the rates, site counts and seasons of Indian Shores and the other private campgrounds of the Minocqua area from their own websites; the state forest campgrounds' current fees; Patricia Lake's site count, carried from aggregators; Oneida County's tax rate and the park's assessment; the parcel's zoning and the standards for the 5-acre expansion; and the Vintage 2025 population estimates for Woodruff and Oneida County.

This model study applies the methodology described on MMCG's RV park feasibility study and USDA feasibility study pages. MMCG prepares RV park and campground feasibility studies for SBA 7(a) and 504, USDA Business and Industry and REAP, and conventional lenders nationwide, with engagements from $4,900 and delivery in 9 to 16 business days.