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Money sways holdouts at mobile home park

The Parsley family makes mobile home residents an offer the day the developer files for another extension.

By JADE JACKSON LLOYD
Published January 23, 2005

REDINGTON SHORES - Those remaining in Parsley's by the Gulf mobile home park vowed to stay together until the absolute end. Once upon a time, they said they'd be there until developers' bulldozers came to clear their homes away.

"Right now, we're all sticking together," Carol Holtsclaw, president of the park's homeowners association, told Neighborhood Times in December. "This is the most unified we've ever been. We're in there for the long haul."

The park's owners dangled some money in front of them, and all that solidarity drained away.

"We were holding out to get what we were entitled to by law," Holtsclaw said during a Friday phone interview. She and her husband are two of the 29 residents taking the buyout. "We were not leaving until something happened."

The 23-acre plot along the Intracoastal Waterway is under contract for $28-million to Sun Vista Development Group. The deal's closing has been postponed several times since the sale was announced, delaying the moves of homeowners.

The Parsley family wrote a letter dated Dec. 29 to property owners offering them $3,000 for single-wides and $6,000 for double-wides if they agreed to move out by March.

This move was meant as a compromise between frustrated residents, who have been waiting to receive eviction notices from the park's owners for months, and the family, said Jonathan Damonte, the Parsleys' attorney.

"We finally reached an agreement to pay them now the same amount of money their mover would have gotten from the state," he said Friday. "It seemed like it was in everybody's best interest to take care of the folks and that's what they wanted."

Without the eviction notices, residents could not qualify for money from the state's relocation fund. It provides $1,375 to those whose single-wides are too old to move and $2,750 to double-wide owners. For residents who can move their homes, the state doles out $3,000 and $6,000, respectively, to movers - not homeowners themselves.

The offer, which also waives rent from January through March, gives homeowners the full amount now, if they're not going to move their units, Damonte said. If they do move the units, they're entitled to half now and half once the mobile home leaves the property.

Sun Vista Development Group applied for its second and final $250,000 contract extension the same day the offer went out to residents. If the developers don't close by May 9, the contract will be nullified, Damonte said.

John Loder, president of Sun Vista, did not return a call for comment. The developers' attorney, Ken Arsenault, said his clients plan on moving forward with the deal. When asked why they applied for another extension, Arsenault cited "business reasons."

"I have no reason to believe it's not going to happen," he said Friday. "I still have no reason to doubt this transaction will close."

Damonte said he doubts the developers would "want to leave a million and a half dollars on the table."

The land at 17715 Gulf Blvd. is slated to be built into a $150-million condo and housing development. The Redington Shores Yacht and Tennis Club would include swimming pools, tennis courts and boat slips.

If the sale goes through, it will be a gated community with units selling for $565,000 to $1.5-million.

Now, what's left of the once-united front of property owners looks forward to leaving Parsley's behind. For 29 of the nearly 39 residents there, taking the buyout was about moving on and getting some financial relief, Holtsclaw said. Twenty-five have already collected checks, she said.

"Basically, we were waiting for our relocation money," Holtsclaw said. "We had to stay until we got our eviction notices. This is the same thing, if not better."

The 10 or so who are holding out have their reasons, she said. Some are engaged in a lawsuit. Others will wait for eviction notices. Some fall into a third group.

"They're taking a chance that there will be only so many of them left that they'll get a much bigger payoff from developers," she said. "They're hoping there will be a better offer down the road."

She said the end of her stay in this former senior playground brings more relief than anything.

"I'm not upset," said Holtsclaw, who bought her home and moved to the park months before the sale was announced in 2003. "I'm just accepting of a situation I have absolutely no control over. That's the best way to sum it up."

[Last modified January 23, 2005, 00:14:21]