Citrus is the only Florida county that won't permit the purchase of individual campsites, but an Inverness lawyer wants to change that.
By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published April 25, 2004
[Times photo: Ted McLaren]
Jeff Jenkins, a retired firefighter, and his wife sold their Virginia home five years ago to live in their RV.
INGLIS - There are bubbling lawn ponds, porches, tents propped up in yards for kids and satellite dishes connecting home to the heavens in this northwest Citrus County neighborhood.
People watered the grass, while others tinkered with motorcycles in driveways one day last week. Others toted wheelbarrows, working on gardens.
Ignoring the fact that this is Nature Coast Landings RV park - filled with motor homes and travel trailers - the 86-space campground seems like any new, deed-restricted Citrus neighborhood, except for one crucial thing:
"You don't feel like you have ownership unless you have a deed," said Ray Bartlett, a retired real estate salesman from New Hampshire, holding a bottle of blue glass cleaner he used to shine the sides of his bus-sized vacation home.
Citrus County doesn't allow RV owners to buy their own spaces. That could change if an Inverness attorney has his way. He's representing three county RV park developers who want to get a faster return on their investment by meeting a growing demand of people who want to buy their own RV parking spots.
Citrus is the only known county that prevents ownership in the state, according to the Florida Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds.
But county officials fear allowing people to buy individual spaces could open a Pandora's box of development rights that Citrus would cede. They say allowing people to own RV spaces would push the county down a slippery slope where homes and even apartments could rise up from these lots, which are mostly located in floodplains or coastal areas that hurricanes could destroy.
By giving developers the proverbial inch, officials fear, they could lose control over the more than 1,870 RV spaces in Citrus County - not to mention the expected boom of additional parks that will sprout once the massive baby boomer generation, RVs' No. 1 consumer, retires with Florida on its mind.
RV plots as "condominiums'
In the 1980s, Citrus County began noticing more people moving into RVs year-round - something the county couldn't do anything about since it had no rules prohibiting it.
"When you have the school bus stopping at an RV park," said Chuck Dixon, community development director, "you have problems."
County government considers RV parks commercial businesses, like motels, and encourages them to locate near the coast and in floodplain areas under the rationale that since they're not permanent, people could move away quickly when danger threatens.
With people treating RVs like homes, officials created rules that limited stays to 180 consecutive days and prohibited RV users from owning the sites they parked on. They also made strict rules about the types of permanent structures, such as sheds, that could be built.
Now, Clark Stillwell, an attorney representing the interests of Rock Crusher Canyon, the Caruth estate and Nature Coast Landings RV parks, proposes changes to the county's land development code that would allow for the sales of individual RV spaces under Florida condominium statutes and rules.
A "condominium" arrangement would allow people to own their own spaces within a park whose common areas are owned by all inhabitants.
"People want to own a specific space and know that it's there for them in the future," Stillwell said.
That's true, according to Jim Eyster, the president and developer of 2-year-old Nature Coast Landings, an 86-space RV park under expansion for 153 more.
"I had traveled around and seen the own-your-own lot concept, which was really popular in South Florida," he said.
RVs and trailers, once nothing more than rolling tents, have gone upscale. On the low end, a folding camping trailer costs about $6,553, according to the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, compared with $1.4-million for the most upscale motor home model.
The bigger these free-wheeling homes become, the more people want a permanent place to dock, industry officials say.
RV ownership has also reached record levels, according to the RVIA, and nearly one in 12 U.S. homes with cars own an RV, too, spurring an annual $12-billion industry.
With more people making road trips that require RV campgrounds and parks, more want a space they can legally call home, said Joseph Striska, president of the Florida Association of Recreational Vehicle Campgrounds.
"They want the guarantee that they will have the same site year after year after year," Striska said. As people age, he added, they also don't want to keep pulling a full-size trailer back and forth and would rather leave them parked.
Sure, people end up leaving their RVs at campgrounds for longer periods if they own a space, and they tend to build more permanent structures, like decks, to spruce up their Winnebago, Striska said, but they also take better care of their spaces than renters.
"If they own the site, they can fix it up and dress it up," he said, "and they know no one else will be on it."
Besides customer demand for their own spaces, Eyster said, selling individual sites allows developers to pay off construction loans faster. Instead of paying them off in 12 to 15 years by renting spaces, a developer can sell sites and be debt clear in two years - a factor that encourages banks to lend to them.
Plus, Eyster acknowledged, selling spaces passes on liability and other costs that park developer-owners now shoulder.
Residential vs. commercial property
Because Citrus County prohibits RV space sales, Eyster turned his park into a "cooperative," which makes Nature Coast Landings RV residents shareholders who own 1/86th of the entire park and give them a right to use an assigned space permanently.
It's an arrangement almost as good as buying an individual space, but it still has some hang-ups, Eyster said, particularly when RV users try to finance their buys, which can range between $29,900 and $53,000 per Nature Coast Landings space.
"Banks like to finance something that if they want to take the land back (through repossession), they can do something with it," he said.
So far, Eyster has been able to presell 15 of the 153 additional spaces that are under construction at Nature Coast. Things would sell faster, he said, if he could hand buyers a deed.
"They're easier to sell as "condominiums.' That's what I'd like to do," Eyster said.
Citrus County's planning department recommended that the proposed changes to the county's rules be killed. However, the request hasn't been scheduled for review by the county's Planning and Development Review Board or county commissioners.
County planners said allowing people to own spaces would encourage them to skirt the county's 180-day residency limit and would encourage them to build more permanent buildings and structures around RVs that could become hazards during floods or hurricanes.
If people own a site, planners said, it would be difficult to evict them. They also said a change in rules could set a precedent that would allow someone to challenge the county's claim that RV parks aren't residential properties.
The proposed change "muddies the water" between what's considered residential and what's considered commercial, Dixon said, at a time when the county is drawing up special, strict zoning districts for RV parks that will make that distinction firmer.
"Residential condominium sales of campsites will give owners the perception of residential property rights," planner Ian McDonald wrote in a staff report.
Over time, his report hinted, people would add more structures to their spaces. More people could view RV parks as similar to mobile home parks, which would foster residential growth in areas where the county wants development limited - such as in the coastal high hazard area, a coastal area prone to danger during a Category 1 hurricane.
County planners said allowing people to own spaces would encourage them to skirt the county's 180-day residency limit and would encourage them to build more permanent buildings and structures around RVs that could become hazards during floods or hurricanes.
RV space ownership could also lead to the fragmentization of RV park sites, which would scatter ownership and create future headaches for the county, too.
Stillwell, the attorney proposing the change on behalf of his clients, disagreed. Just because people own spaces would not mean they will turn into permanent residential areas, he said.
"The fact that (parks' zoning) would be commercial would put people on notice that this is not a residential unit," he said.
Eyster understands the county's fears, which is why he would sign off on regulations that allow space selling with conditions that prevent RV parks developing into something the county does not want down the road.
"We're willing to have any restrictions that will keep it what it is," Eyster said.
Striska, the president of the state RV campground association, said Citrus County's concerns are unfounded. Counties all over Florida allow RV parks to sell individual spaces. In more than 25 years in the industry, he said, he has never seen an RV park become anything more than an RV park.
"It hasn't happened yet," Striska said.
Resort sharing replaces deeds for now
For now, Eyster will continue to market Nature Coast Landings as a resort that allows people to "own your own R.V. site," as a brochure states.
"Owning a RV site in an upscale yet affordable resort that offers ample amenities, social activities, a superb area and friendly people waiting to make friends and socialize is the best way to enjoy your RV to the fullest," it goes on to say. "This is one of the many reasons owning a RV site is a fast growing concept for RVers throughout the state of Florida."
Members are happy to own a share of the resort, which sits 1,000 feet from the Cross Florida Barge Canal, which leads to the Gulf of Mexico to the west and Lake Rousseau to the east. But some wish they had one more thing.
"I would have preferred to have a deeded lot because I'd be more secure in it," said Jeff Jenkins, a retired firefighter from Fairfax, Va.
County officials, on the other hand, would be more secure if he didn't.
