New overnight lodging facilities are so sorely missed at Flamingo in Everglades National Park that potential concessionaires are being offered early payback of their construction costs — $5,350,000 at least, and more if they choose to build more than the minimum required by a new prospectus.

Flamingo’s only overnight option has been camping since 2005, when hurricanes Katrina and Wilma wrecked the old, weakly-built motel building and cottages, which were in poor condition anyway. New Orleans, the best-known victim of Katrina’s floods, has made more rebuilding progress than Everglades’ renowned fishing outpost, which has made none.

Everglades issued a request for concessionaire proposals three years ago, without offering an early payback. Customarily, concessionaires that build in national parks get their investments back when their contracts expire, unless they are renewed.

Justin Unger, the park’s deputy superintendent who wasn’t there then, said some prospective concessionaires responded with proposals in 2013, but none met all the park’s criteria for elevated cottages, ecotents and other facilities.

He thinks the payback should attract some acceptable proposals. The terms appear attractive, offering a quick recovery of building costs as soon as the new facilities are finished and accepted by National Park Service headquarters.

“It works something like a mortgage,” Unger said. “But because we are taking out a loan (from the National Park Service) and are able to pay off the concessionaire, he doesn’t have to carry the debt and is able to turn back a higher profit margin to NPS.”

That arrangement also should let a concession company make a more attractive proposal to obtain financing: It can promise its lenders to repay in a little more than five years, instead of over the 20-year length of its contract with NPS. The agency wants the winning bidder to pay it a franchise fee of 1 percent of gross revenues in the first two years and 9 percent in the next 18.

“Based on our market analysis we’re very confident that there’s enough profitability,” Unger said.

Projected revenue for 2019 is something between $4.4 million and $6 million from lodging rentals, boat tours, fuel sales and restaurant revenue.

The concessionaire will be required to spend at least $4,815,000 and as much as $5,885,000 to construct 24 elevated cottages of concrete modules, to be lifted onto platforms by cranes. There must also be foundations for 20 ecologically designed tents, a restaurant — also elevated and made of concrete modules — plus an overnight check-in facility and other retail items.

The deadline to submit proposals is July 13. The timetable calls for construction to begin by May 1 next year and for the facilities to be ready for public use by Sept. 30, 2018.

Until then, anyone wanting to stay overnight at Flamingo has a couple of camping choices — by tent or recreational vehicle. Both have indoor restrooms with showers — heated by solar power on the tenting grounds, not on the RV campsite.

Other than that, the nearest overnight lodgings are 50 miles north at the edge of Florida City, in a state prison. That place is unpopular, yet always curiously full.

To see the complete prospectus for the facilities at Flamingo, go to concessions.nps.gov/ever001-17.html.