Over the past eight years, the children’s camp has hosted an average of 9,000 campers and 10,000 guests each year, Janna Kelsey, senior director of marketing and communications, said in an email to Community Impact.
The big picture
T Bar M Camps & Retreats broke ground on Phase 1 of the project in November. With the expansion, the children’s camp will be adding 20 acres to its 60-acre property.
The architect on the project is Assemble + Co., and the project manager is Schumann Consulting, a locally-owned and -operated project management company.
TJ Grossi, executive director for Schumann Consulting, said they were excited to see the project start.
“As a construction management company we do a lot of different things but when we get to work for a nonprofit with a specific mission, that’s always exciting to get behind,” Grossi said.
The four phase expansion includes a new dining hall, maintenance barn, family cabins, amenities and a welcome center. The first two phases are being constructed concurrently to allow phases three and four to be operable.
Cole Adams, senior director of development, said they had outgrown T Bar M’s current dining facility and that the new dining hall will double their dining capacity for their overnight base camp and allow campers to eat all at one time as opposed to shifts. Phase 1 plans also include a recirculating creek and pond.
“We’re dreaming about how we can put ziplines across the pond and use the water flowing through there to create white noise to help with [Hwy.] 46,” President John MacDonald added.
A 6,450-square-foot teen center and two 18,150-square-foot cabins for families will be built in Phase 2. Each family cabin will have 16 rooms.
The welcome center, which will be 26,540 square-feet, will be constructed during Phase 3. This facility will be open to the public.
Funding the project
The nonprofit organization is funding its multimillion dollar expansion with its capital campaign—Forward Campaign.
Adams said they came up with the name after reflecting on how they wanted to describe the growth they are experiencing.
“We feel like the Lord is moving us forward and we’re asking people to join us in that and we’re looking for partners that will help us move forward in the vision,” he said.
“We’re seeing a lot of families, particularly in the technology age, really struggling to stay connected and so this desire for an opportunity to disconnect with everything that’s getting their attention and reconnect with each other—reconnect with their faith—is a big part of what we do with our existing family camp and we’re seeing demand for that skyrocket,” MacDonald said.
Each summer, the nonprofit has five weeks of family camps with 20 families during each of those weeks.
“With the expansion we are [going to] double that to 44 families...and be able to do that for all 10 weeks of the summer,” MacDonald said.
