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Camp Montvale will reopen its doors to children on Monday for the first time since 2006. The Friends of Camp Montvale, a local nonprofit group, has contracted to provide a day camp for children related to employees of Ruby Tuesday.
“It’s going well,” said Bryan Roberson, Friends president. “This means restarting services for the community. It’s the first event that the camp will be hosting since the YMCA closed it.”
Harmony Property Group purchased the 400-acre-plus Camp Montvale property in December 2006 and is allowing the Friends of Camp Montvale the chance to operate a youth camp on the site. In 2006, the East Tennessee YMCA closed the camp, which had been in operation since 1948.
Meridith Hammond, Ruby Tuesday team coordinator, said Camp Montvale will provide excellent recreational opportunities for the about 60 children attending the day camp.
“We’re really excited,” Hammond said. “Its’ going to give the kids a lot more room to play. We do this as an added benefit for our employees.”
This is the fourth year that Ruby Tuesday has sponsored a day camp.
“Before, we had our kids camp at our (Maryville) offices,” Hammond said. “Due to the growth, we no longer have enough space for everyone. We decided to take it out there to Camp Montvale.”
Roberson said the Friends of Camp Montvale will be raising funds to ensure the camp can reopen to the public during summer 2008.
“By this fall, we need to have $75,000 in place to get the necessary things for summer services. We need financial partners to come forward and help with the initial opening.”
Billy Minser, who serves on the Friends board of directors, said Camp Montvale has great potential as a center for environmental education.
“I could foresee it really blossoming,” he said. “I’d like to see us build an environmental education center that would have two or three classrooms in it as well as a natural history museum and maybe a wet lab where students could get their hands on things.”
The Harmony group spent $4 million to purchase the Camp Montvale property, borrowing $3.4 million of the total. It expects to pay for the loan through revenues generated by the Overlook at Montvale, an 80-lot planned unit development on 280 acres off Happy Valley Road and adjacent to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Harmony recently settled two lawsuits against the project filed by Save Chilhowee Mountain Inc.
For more information on the Friends of Camp Montvale, check online at www.campmontvale.org.