It’s no secret the 2025 NFL Draft will be held in Green Bay on April 24-26, 2025. Shawano County businesses are busy promoting themselves in hopes their products and services won’t be a secret, either.
In that vein, the Shawano County Park Campground will open earlier than normal in the season to accommodate anyone needing a campsite during the event.
Keith Marquardt, Shawano County parks director, hopes to fill 75% of the available openings. With 100 campsites, and campers expected to stay anytime from Wednesday to Saturday night the week of the draft, that’s 400 possible nights.
“We’re not going to raise our rates; we’re just going to keep our normal rates, which are $35 a night, including water and electricity,” Marquardt said. “We’ll have the bathrooms, at least the heated one, open. I don’t think we have any reservations yet.”
Marquardt is also president of the Shawano County Tourism Council.
For now, the campground is promoted on the parks department’s online reservation website at www.shawanocountyparks.com/parks/.
Marquardt said the Highway and Parks Committee opted to keep the rates the same.
“It gets to a point where, ‘Do you need to price gouge everything?’” he said.
There are no minimum stays required during the NFL Draft.
“It can be one night. It can be three nights; it can be four nights,” Marquardt said. “We have three-night minimums on holiday weekends, two-night minimum just on weekends, but that time of the year, it’s just extra money, extra revenue for us.”
Normally, campsites aren’t rented out until the first week in May.
“Once the chamber and the tourism decides where they’re putting their advertising involved with the Green Bay chamber, hopefully we’ll be full,” he said. “I would hope at least three quarters of the nights, at least 300-400, are booked. I don’t know how many people are coming from out of the area that would haul a camper or a tent or something like that. I think the cottages and all that will certainly fill up. Camping? Yeah.”
Campsites at the Brown County Fairgrounds and Reforestation Camp Campground will also be available earlier than normal, but Marquardt said he heard those rates will be higher than normal.
The store at the county park will also be open during that weekend. Staff training is often conducted that weekend, but Marquardt said it can be moved forward a week.
“It wouldn’t be hard for us to open,” he said. “We get enough staff coming back from year to year that we wouldn’t have a lot of training to do.”
Also, he’s not sure how much time campers will spend at the park. After all, they’re in the area for the draft. The campground, like a hotel room, is a place to spend the night before heading out again the next day.
“We’ll play it be ear,” he said. “It’s a new experience for all of us. It’s exciting, though.”
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
