Opinion: Freedom Will Benefit From Clarifying Regulations About Residential Summer Camps

Editorial

Freedom—November 8, 2026—Freedom’s Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) has recommended that the town clarify its regulations governing residential summer camps. We agree but think the review should go further than what was proposed at the joint ZBA-Planning Board meeting last month.

The issue arose this summer after neighbors complained that White Mountain Weddings LLC and Lake Ossipee Conference Center/NH Retreat Center LLC had transformed Camp Cody into a busy year-round commercial venue without town approval.

Freedom’s Zoning Officer ruled that the wedding and conference businesses were “grandfathered.” In zoning terms, that meant they were pre-existing non-conforming uses—not permitted by the ordinance, but legally protected to continue. The ZBA upheld the Zoning Officer’s decision.

The ZBA’s takeaway from the proceedings was that the ordinance should more clearly define which non-conforming activities residential camps may conduct off-season, with a goal of reducing the likelihood of future disputes.

We agree. But our takeaway was that the ordinance also needs to clarify how much a non-conforming commercial use can be expanded before additional town approvals are required.

That distinction matters. At the hearings, the complainants’ attorney argued that even if weddings and conferences predated zoning, the scale of those activities had substantially increased, bringing more traffic, noise, artificial lighting and trespassing.

Their attorney also pointed to the scale of Camp Cody’s March expansion of its dining hall septic system, from 5,000 to 15,000 gallons, to accommodate weddings and conferences as “mutually exclusive uses” separate from the children’s camp.

The ZBA acknowledged that Camp Cody’s non-conforming uses had “intensified,” but they observed that the lake is “busier” than it was 40 years ago, and “natural expansion and growth” had brought the businesses “into the modern world.”

Those observations may help explain the board’s decision, but as a precedent they offer little guidance for future boards in determining when an expansion of a non-conforming use goes too far.

The zoning ordinance doesn’t help either. Section 902, governing changes or expansions of non-conforming uses, was last revised 36 years ago. Its emphasis is on limiting increases in the size of non-conforming structures rather than on the broader impacts of increased commercial activity.

The New Hampshire Municipal Association explains that grandfathering is intended to let property owners “keep what they have, where they have it, but to tightly control expansion or extension of that use.”

State court rulings have established that non-conforming businesses may grow naturally, but such protection does not confer an unlimited right to develop a substantially larger non-conforming operation.

The challenge for towns with zoning ordinances is to distinguish between reasonable natural growth and unreasonable expansions that could have a disproportionate impact on neighbors and the environment.

In some instances, making that kind of distinction could be a heavy lift, and town boards would benefit from having regulatory standards to work from.

Residential camps are among Freedom’s most valuable community institutions, and their legitimate interests deserve strong protection. So too do the interests of nearby property owners, on and off the lake.

Changes to the ordinance can protect both—not by diminishing anyone’s grandfathered rights, but by defining the limits of those rights more clearly. We support the ZBA’s recommendation to put this issue on the town’s agenda and believe everyone will benefit from the discussion.