Pineridge Resort

May 13, 2020

Mike Davidson bought the Pineridge Resort a year ago. The resort, which is on 5th Depot Lake, includes 11 self-contained housekeeping cabins, a log home/lodge and store, 28 trailer sites and 15 camping sites. It has a beach and a boat launch as well, all on a large, wooded property.

Davidson, with his wife Jackie and brother Drew, loved everything about Pineridge, but it needed work, and they have been hard at it ever since.

“It was a beautiful place, and it sort of fell into my lap. But since we bought it, it has been a non-stop effort to improve. It needed a lot of sweat equity to bring it to the point where our clients can enjoy the beauty of the lake, the shoreline, the whole property,” hew said.

Luckily, the Davidson's have a number of skills. Replacing hot water heaters, upgrading plumbing and electrical systems, repairing leaks, and clearing brush, have all been daily enterprises for over a year now.

And they had help.

“I think of the CFDC, Anne Prichard and Sue Theriault, as friends who will do anything to help. If I have a question about anything to do with my business, I just call, and if they don’t know the answer they try to find it for me. It has meant a lot to us,” he said, in a phone interview last week.

Like other resort owners, COVID-19 has made it impossible to make any firm plans for this summer, but the Davidson's are still preparing to open up, perhaps in June depending on what the government of Ontario decides.

“We are waiting just like everyone else to find out when we can open, and we know it will not be the same as a normal summer,” he said. “Everything we are planning to do this summer is geared towards keeping everybody safe.

The cabins at Pineridge have their own kitchens and washrooms, so with extra cleaning between visitors the Davidson's are confident renting them out. The lodge and campground will probably stay closed, but the store may be able to open, one customer at a time, They are also hoping the trailer sites can be open.

“We are not going to be renting boats out by the hour or the day. It is too much work to clean and disinfect them between uses, but maybe weekly rentals will be possible. And the beach won't be open,” he said, adding that perhaps a designated area of beach will be assigned to each cabin.

“We are in touch with our association and they might get heads up about what is happening, but nobody really knows.”

The Davidson's are also not focusing on the revenue they will not have access to this summer. They are concentrating their efforts on the continuing improvement of the resort for the long term, and on finding ways to make Pineridge a safe place this summer for customers to enjoy.

They are also fortunate, in comparison to some other local summer resorts, that they do not have a large number of returning American visitors.