The camp recently came under new ownership in June when Dan and Andrea Neal purchased the business from Dan Neal’s mother, Jane Neal, and his aunt, Judy Kirtly.
The camp was opened in 1971 by Dan Neal's grandparents, Carter and Trudy Lester.
In June, Dan Neal said the camp would be relocating with a new site built out to suit the existing clientele and serve more area children.
He officially announced the new location at 3503 Kelly Lane, Plugerville, July 14.
“We want to continue Camp Doublecreek for the next 50 years if we can help it,” he said. “We definitely want to continue to serve kids in this community, and we do feel very much like this new campus is going to give us a new opportunity to serve even more camp families.”
Dan Neal said rapid growth and development in Round Rock prevented them from keeping the camp at its location at 800 Double Creek Drive.
“It's exciting to be able to continue the legacy to continue the tradition,” Dan Neal said. “It is also bittersweet, leaving Round Rock. We've always been a Round Rock-based camp. We’re even in the Round Rock history book, so you know it's kind of one of those bittersweet moments. But we worked really hard to see if we could find some place in Round Rock, and that was just not a doable option with the way things are going right now."
The new property, located at 3503 Kelly Lane, Pflugerville, will allow the camp to regain the presence of a creek but will be downsized to 9.99 acres, according to property information from the Travis Central Appraisal District.
Originally, the Round Rock Camp Doublecreek property included two creeks on 128 acres, but over the years property sales that served to keep the camp afloat reduced the camp to 40.73 acres, Dan Neal said.
“One of the things that we're excited about is there's wide open city parkland that has no amenities on it, and that land is adjacent or backs up to ours,” Dan said. “The city has said if we wanted to use that, it would be open for use for our particular kind of camp or recreational activities.”
Plans for the camp include elevated covered walkways, which Dan Neal described as having a “treehouse effect,” since the structures will be focused in the area along a creek that bisects the property.
“Instead of walking on the ground from activity to activity, we’ll actually be walking up and over, which makes a lot of sense since we’ll have a creek,” Dan Neal said. “So, that's going to be the most unique feature in our master plan.”
With the camp slated to open in 2023, Dan Neal said a groundbreaking could take place as soon as January 2022.
Programming for the camp’s Round Rock location is still planned through summer 2022, and Dan Neal said a master plan for the Pflugerville site will be sent to parents in November.
Kelly Lane is amid major construction that began this summer to widen the road from two to four lanes, and Dan Neal said his hope is that as the road project is built out, his camp will be featured along with it as a marquee example of the city’s growth.
“We're excited to be working with the city as they develop [Kelly Lane] out ... and we can hopefully be something that's highlighted and something that they're proud of,” Dan Neal said.
