Cambria lodge owner wants to recreate Christmas Market in Texas — some residents are wary
The owner of the Cambria Pines Lodge has confirmed plans to recreate the inn’s famed Christmas Market as part of a resort development at a spot in rural Texas.
News about the possible project is spreading through the communities like a tumbleweed in a tornado, but if comments from local residents are any indication, Dirk Winter may have some work to do to win them over to his conceptual proposal, which calls for the holiday display, 100 duplexes for overnight rental and maybe even an ice-skating rink.
Winter, a hotelier who owns lodgings in California and Oregon, wants to bring the Christmas Market concept to a property located near a pair of tiny towns midway between two of the state’s biggest cities.
Carmine (estimated population about 250) and Round Top (estimated population, almost 90) are about 7 miles apart via rural Highways 458 and 237.
The two-lane roads into and out of the towns also connect to highways that lead to the state’s capital city Austin, 73 miles to the west, the gulf metropolis of Houston, and 95 miles to the east.
“We are exploring the idea of a Christmas Market in the Round Top area,” Winter confirmed to The Tribune in an email. “A number of business people in the area are trying to encourage this, so we have drawn up some conceptual plans. … We are exploring lots of options and determining what the infrastructure requirements would be under various uses.”
He also confirmed that, in those plans, “a seasonal ice rink is an option.”
According to a listing on opencorporates.com, a business called the Round Top Events Ranch LLC incorporated in Texas on May 21, 2021, with the agent listed as Dirk Winter of 2905 Burton Drive, Cambria. That’s the address of the Cambria Pines Lodge, where his Christmas Market has been held each holiday season for a decade.
Not much is known for sure yet about Winter’s Round Top plans, probably because they’re still in the concept stage. He has reportedly approached state, county, city and local agencies about his proposal for the property.
On Dec. 21, the Round Top Events Ranch LLC property at 1120 W. Fuchs Road was declared exempt from inspection by a county flood-plain administrator because of the nature of its location, and was therefore granted a Class A yellow permit that’s tacked on the property’s fence.
What Dirk Winter is proposing in Texas
A report about a late February meeting of the Carmine County Commissioners’ meeting and Winter’s plans on March 1 were the lead story in the Fayette County Record, with a headline that read “100-Duplex Resort, Christmas Village Planned Here.”
The story began, “Fayette County Commissioners spent a large portion of their meeting last Thursday discussing a proposed resort development between Round Top and Carmine that would include a Christmas market and as many as 100 duplexes for nightly rental. The property owner, Dirk Winter, has developed similar properties in California, including the Cambria Pines Lodge, home of the Cambria Christmas Market.”
KWHI radio reported that Winter asked commissioners for permission to divide the 150-acre property into five parcels, and that the hotel owner had said water would come from the city of Carmine.
The radio station said that, when commissioners brought up the issue of traffic congestion around the resort, Winter replied that “he is willing to pay for any improvements needed to surrounding roadways.”
The newspaper quoted the hotelier as saying, “What we’re proposing to do is a resort with a Christmas Market being the first phase” on the western area of the property. It would include a commercial kitchen and some restroom facilities. However, “during the market, the primary waste is through port-a-potty systems.”
“The lot to the east,” he reportedly told the commissioners, “will eventually be developed into a resort with duplexes that will be phased in as we feel the need is there.”
The duplexes apparently would be rented on a nightly basis.
The commissioners have delayed their next meeting on the issue, a special workshop, because they haven’t yet gotten enough information from Winter, according to Marlene Waak, president of the Carmine Chamber of Commerce.
The paper said the city of Carmine has already agreed to provide water to the project, with Winter paying to install a pipeline from Carmine to his property at the corner of West Fuchs Road and Highway 237.
At the commissioners’ meeting, county Judge Joe Weber seemed to sum up his opinion, and perhaps those of his central Texas neighbors, saying, according to the newspaper, “I’m concerned about the burden of infrastructure, traffic, safety, quality of life and all those other things you sometimes can’t put a dollar sign on. I’m also sensitive to telling people what they can and can’t do. But we’re in the business of looking out for the best interests of our county and the residents who live here.”
Texas residents react to Christmas Market plans
Some Texans interviewed about the prospective project by phone said they have or have heard some concerns, most frequently about traffic and infrastructure impacts, light pollution from the display that they assume the market would bring and the overall effects such a project could have on their wide-open spaces.
However, others said they didn’t yet know enough about the project to comment, or they hesitated to do so on the record.
A representative for the Round Top Chamber of Commerce, who declined to be identified, fell into both categories, saying the board hadn’t met about the issue yet and had just learned about it recently from a newspaper report.
Waak, the Carmine chamber president, said in a March 11 phone interview that she also couldn’t speak for the chamber board, because they, too, haven’t discussed the issue formally or voted on it, and she was hesitant to voice her own opinions.
However, she was willing to quickly compile some comments she’d heard from others.
She said some petitions against the project are being circulated, and social media postings are addressing the issues.
So far, Waak said, “I don’t see or hear anything positive.”
She explained that “Carmine is very small and proud of it,” and the people who have talked to her about Winter’s plan say, “This is the wrong location. It could be a good idea … someplace else.”
Light pollution has been mentioned, Waak said. “People come here from Houston and other cities to buy small acreage for their get-away homes.”
That was something mentioned by Judge Weber at the Carmine County commissioners meeting attended by Winter, according to the The Fayette County Record.
The judge asked Winter if he’d contacted any area residents.
“Lots of people have property out there and purchased their homes to watch the sun set in the west,” Weber said. “This is a big thing. It’s going to have an impact on infrastructure, quality of life for some.”
According to the paper, Winter replied that “he has met with adjacent neighbors.”
Potential neighbor Marcia Hintgen of Carmine, that chamber’s recording secretary, said the proposed resort is within a mile or so of her front porch.
She said the resort plan sounds like something that could eventually be open all year, and in their area now, “about 80% of the retail businesses are open four days a week.”
Would those businesses stay open more if visitation increased sufficiently? That’s another unanswered question.
But whatever else happened, the towns and the area could be forever changed by the project, Hintgen said, “and some people won’t like that, especially the people who spent lots of money to build beautiful houses so they could get away from the city.”
Waak said she’s heard the same kinds of comments, including that Carmine “is way too small for that kind of traffic. It’s a location set up for peace and quiet.”
She quoted others as saying, “It’s difficult to see the turn-off from the small, two-lane paved road” leading to Winter’s property, which could make it difficult or dangerous for out-of-towners coming in for a winter evening event.
Texas towns do host large events
That said, Round Top and Carmine are no strangers to special events, even big ones. As the Round Top Chamber’s website says, the town “is a slice of the good life located in the Texas Hill Country. With a population of 90 people, and all the incredible dining, shopping and lodging options a person could want, we like to think of ourselves as big time small.”
Twice a year, spring and fall, a mega outdoor mall of antiques sets up in the area for several weeks, filling roadside properties, numerous halls, barns and tents along a 14-mile stretch of road.
For those events, Waak said, “People come in from all over, from out of state. I’ve even seen helicopters land from other countries.”
But the sale events apparently are over and done with in a couple of weeks. In fact, the spring event runs March 17 through April 3.
Other smaller events happen in the area throughout the year, according to internet sites, but most are much shorter in duration.
The Cambria Christmas Market
The Cambria Christmas Market has not been without its own issues over how the event impacts its surrounding community.
Pre-pandemic, the market attracted many thousands of attendees each year during the month between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, with recent events spilling over into the next year for lodging guests. Ticket holders see the more than 2 million holiday lights, vignettes and displays, listen to music, shop at vendor booths and partake in German-style glogg and food.
Many attendees love the holiday event, including San Luis Obispo County residents, but some Cambrians, especially those who live nearby, aren’t so enchanted. Some of them lodged formal appeals against Winter’s application for a new permit to operate the market last year.
The 2021 event went on as scheduled at Winter’s Cambria Pines Lodge, but not as originally planned, because of delays caused by the permit situation.
Another Winter property, the Oregon Garden Resort in Silverton, also hosts a Christmas market, which is touted on a website that’s very similar to the one for the Cambria market. The Silverton Market website, silvertonchristmasmarket.com, says that display has a million holiday lights.
Silverton, population about 10,700, and the resort are well known for their 80-acre botanical gardens, which Winter was instrumental in revitalizing, indulging his lifelong passion for gardening and landscape design.
Winter’s commercial history began when he built the Sea Otter Inn in Cambria in 1983 and launched Moonstone Hotel Properties, according to the corporation’s website.
The site lists current corporation properties as being the Oregon Garden Resort and six California lodgings, including the Cambria Pines Lodge, Sea Otter Inn on Moonstone Beach Drive, J. Patrick House and Inn across from the Lodge property, and The Monterey Hotel in Monterey. Winter also owns the nearby Cambria Nursery & Florist.
Through the decades since, Winter’s corporation has bought, managed and then sold various other properties, including some along Cambria’s Moonstone Beach Drive and the former Apple Tree Inn in Fishcamp, California.
This story was originally published March 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
