New pricing will be in place when the renovated campground at Noccalula Falls Park reopens for business on March 17.
The Gadsden City Council adopted the schedule, which officials say brings the campground into line with the others nearby, at its Feb. 18 meeting.
Standard hookups are $65 a night and premium pull-throughs are $75 (12% lodging tax and nightly surcharges of $1.50 and $5 will be added per stay, plus there’s a non refundable $10 reservation fee).
Those fees are for four people per site; there’s a $5 per night charge for each additional person. There’s a 10% discount for military personnel, senior citizens and AARP and Good Sam members.
A two-night minimum stay is required on weekends and a three-night minimum stay on holidays. There’s a maximum 28 days per stay.
Cabins at the campground are $150 per night with a $125 cleaning fee (plus the lodging tax and surcharges), with a minimum two-night rental.
The more than $11 million renovation project at the campground began in January 2024 and is nearing completion.
It includes:
- Realignment and expansion of the internal roadway network, to include decorative roadway lighting
- New utility services throughout the campground
- Reconstruction/realignment of the individual RV parking spots with improved space and amenities
- Renovation of both bath houses
- Construction of a new zero-entry (long, gradual, sloping entry) swimming pool with an adjacent large pavilion
- Conversion of the existing administrative office to a rentable cabin
- Construction of a new administrative office
- Reconstruction/resurfacing of the lower parking lot (between Noccalula Road and the campground entrance)
- A new Fire Station No. 5, which will include a police precinct, is nearing completion next door to the campground
Mayor Craig Ford, discussing the new fee schedule during the pre-council work session (it was approved on its first reading following a unanimous consent vote), said, “We knew we were going to do this when we renovated the campground.”
He said given that rental fees at Noccalula Falls will be exempt from sales taxes, “We’re going to come out even” with Tillison Bend Campground, which was recently annexed into the city, and River Rocks Landing.
Council member Chris Robinson, whose district includes Noccalula Falls, mentioned complaints he’s received — which have also been circulating on social media — about the lack of primitive or tent camping at the renovated campground.
Ford said he’d also fielded those complaints, and that primitive camping and yerts (portable round tents) are in the works for 20 additional acres adjoining the campground, which the city purchased in November 2024.
“But right now, that’s not what we’re marketing for,” he said. “That’s not how we renovated this campground. We’re going for very large motor home sites, a state-of-the-art, cream-of-the cream campground.”
Ford said Goodwyn Mills Cawood, the city’s consultant on the project, had indicated that it would be difficult to mix the two types of camping “next to each other, you’ve got to separate them.”
There are also concerns about the homeless who, because the camping rates at Noccalula Falls have traditionally been cheaper on average, set up tents there and “use electricity for their stuff,” Ford said, “and it was kind of a dangerous situation.”
The mayor said he knows people from surrounding counties are used to visiting the falls on the weekends for such camping, and Robinson observed that even Gadsden residents who live nearby have enjoyed “(getting) over in the woods with a fire going, chicken on the grill, laying back and chilling out, and feeling like they were somewhere else.”
However, Ford said he thinks the renovated facility “will attract people from Alaska and Canada with million-dollar motor homes.”
Robinson added, “It’s going to be different because a lot of people aren’t used to that. They’re going to think we overdid it, but we really didn’t over do it. We’re trying to do what the rest of the country is doing and attract tourism dollars.”
In other action, the council:
- Approved an agreement with Prince Metal Stamping to abate construction-related transaction taxes and non-educational property taxes for 10 years on a planned addition to its facility near the Northeast Alabama Regional Airport; the capital investment will total up to $5.5 million, Ford said, and the city should lose only about $140,000 in tax revenue over the decade while an additional $120,000 is generated for schools, plus 340 jobs will be preserved
- Approved a $159,751 agreement with CDG Inc. for construction, engineering and inspection for sidewalk improvements on Chestnut Street between Sixth and Seventh streets, and extending from Chestnut to Broad Street along Sixth Street, funded by a 2024 ALDOT Transportation Alternative Program grant
- Authorized agreements with Volkert Inc. for a transit study and to develop the 2050 long-range transportation plan for the Gadsden-Etowah Metropolitan Planning Organization
- Approved a settlement in a case brought by Investment Property Unlimited against the city, involving “a negligence action arising out of a nuisance abatement,” according to City Attorney Lee Roberts
- Finalized the purchase of land at 2510 Rainbow Drive for a “Welcome to Gadsden” sign
