Tiny house ‘resort’ in the works in Pennsylvania

ELIZABETHTOWN, PA. » A campground in Elizabethtown is undergoing a transformation of sorts, one that will give it a unique selling point on the East Coast:

Its cabins will be tiny houses.

Tiny Estates will open with about half a dozen tiny houses this spring on the grounds of the former Ridge Run Campground. The Hobson family, which finalized the property’s purchase earlier this month, has longterm plans that include dozens more tiny homes, each with a slightly different design; a large event space; offgrid units; and typical campground amenities.

“We’re expecting a lot of millennials because it is sort of a novelty, a unique lodging experience,” Abby Hobson, who is developing Tiny Estates, said. “We can target someone who would come (to the area) every week or every month for lodging and want something different each time, and we expect a lot of ‘try before you buyers’ who want to test the (tiny house) experience in different models.”

The project is a good fit with what was there before it, said Justin Evans, Mount Joy Township manager and zoning officer. And it can be grandfathered in to the pre-existing use, so zoning wasn’t a hurdle the way it is in much of Lancaster County.

The foundation of Tiny Estates So what is a tiny house? Its size typically maxes out at 400 square feet. It’s built on a wheeled trailer, so it’s mobile. Beyond that, styles, locations, power and uses vary widely.

Hobson became interested in tiny houses a couple years ago and, after a family trip to the Tiny House & Simple Living Jamboree in Colorado, the Hobsons arrived home with an aluminum Volstrukt frame and plans to build one of their own.

“So we completed the shell and said, ‘Well, where do we put it?’ “Hobson recalled. “We took it to an antiques store (that her parents, Dan and Joy Hobson, own) in Strasburg, but the township didn’t want it there. We tried to move it to several places, with the same result. So now I see people’s issue — it’s not that they can’t build them, it’s that (then) they don’t have somewhere to put them.”

That led to Hobson earning her real estate license to better figure out a solution, and that, eventually, led to the idea for a tiny house resort and the search for appropriate land.

The former campground already had some residents who were living full time in recreational vehicles — not typically an accepted use — as well as abandoned units. Those residents have moved out, Hobson said, and a 19thcentury house and barn on the property, which no longer were usable, are being demolished.