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Hands off this mobile home park

When Chesapeake Point went up for sale, its residents pooled their money.

By NORA KOCH
Published June 7, 2005

	[Photo courtesy of Chesapeake Point Mobile Home Park]
	Residents at Chesapeake Point Mobile Home Park in Tarpon Springs can sit on their decks and watch boats passing along the Anclote River.
	[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
	Neal McLaughlin, president of the Chesapeake Point Co-op Inc., talks Monday about the successful $4.149-million purchase of the Chesapeake Point Mobile Home Park by its residents.

TARPON SPRINGS - A "For Sale" sign at a Florida mobile home park often means big bucks for developers and doom for residents.

Hapless renters get evicted. Their mobile homes are razed to make way for McMansions.

But not at the Chesapeake Point Mobile Home Park. When redevelopment threatened, residents rallied and matched a developer's offer. They bought their park for $4.15-million and saved their homes.

Score one for the little guy.

"Frankly, we didn't really think they could do it," said Mike Mackenzie, a Dunedin real estate lawyer who represented Lehigh Chesapeake LLC, a four-member investor group that wanted the park's 6 acres for 20 high-end single-family homes.

The tidy, 66-lot park sits on a quiet, shady peninsula. It's a 55-plus community, with residents from all over North America. The homes are neat, but modest.

For 15 years, Moe St Jacques, 65, and his wife, Elaine, have come south from Ottawa, Canada, to spend winters at Chesapeake Point.

"It's more than just a living spot," said St Jacques, a retired mortgage broker and former association president. Neighbors help each other with rides and shopping. Year-round residents look after snowbirds' homes in the summers. Everyone stays in touch.

From the decks of their single-wides and added-on Florida rooms, residents gaze at passing boats on the Anclote River and see ritzy tile-roofed homes on the opposite bank.

It's a developer's dream, really.

Longtime owner Jack Eggspuehler knew that.

Since 1969, Eggspuehler, who lives in Ohio, had held an interest in the park. But real estate was always a sideline to his main business, aviation. It had been years since he raised the rent, which never broke $400 a month, he said. Last year, he decided to sell.

"The asset outgrew the business because the land became so valuable," Eggspuehler said.

Still, over more than 35 years, he had developed a strong connection to the park and its residents. Some had lived there for years. When he decided to sell, he made sure they knew in case they wanted to buy.

But Eggspuehler is a savvy businessman and wasn't going to give the park away.

"It's not fair for me to say, "Well, I'll discount my potential income from the sale of this property,"' he said.

When park residents learned Eggspuehler was trying to get out, they organized, said Neal McLaughlin, 74, a snowbird from Oklahoma who led the charge.

They held meetings, did their own feasibility studies to figure out what they could afford and determined how many residents were willing to buy in. They hired a consultant and an attorney, courted investors from the North and waited to hear that Eggspuehler had a contract.

"If it got to $6-million, we probably couldn't do it," McLaughlin said.

State law says that if an owner publicly puts a mobile home park up for sale, residents must be given the right of first refusal. After the owner receives an offer, residents have 45 days to match it.

Chesapeake Point residents formed a co-op, elected McLaughlin president and raised $1.35-million cash from 39 shareholders - 26 residents and 13 outside investors. That secured the co-op's long-term financing. Shares for waterfront lots went for $50,000; inside lots went for $40,000.

Meanwhile, Mackenzie and the other investors were working on plans to construct upscale homes on 15 waterfront lots and five interior lots. About a week before they were scheduled to to close the deal, he said, they heard that the park residents had come to the table.

"That's probably the second-best result we could have had," Mackenzie said. "We would have liked to have acquired the property, but we admire them for doing it."

Such a feat isn't unheard of, but resident purchases are falling off as property values skyrocket, said Don Hazelton, president of Largo-based Federation of Manufactured Home Owners of Florida.

More often, an outside developer snaps up the property.

In March, Sun Vista Development Group LLC spent $28-million to buy Parsley's by the Gulf, a 25-acre mobile home park in Redington Shores that is slated to be replaced with a $150-million gated condo and housing development.

In December, the 7.8-acre Anchor North Bay in West Oldsmar was sold for $3.35-million and developers say they have plans to build upscale townhomes.

Chesapeake Point residents bucked that trend and closed the deal on May 31.

"It's not that they got a deal," Hazelton said, "but they ensured themselves that at least their lifestyle won't change."

After the closing on Chesapeake Point, the park's new owners opened a bottle of champagne, St Jacques said.

But the celebration is hardly over.

"In October, when we all get back together," he said, "we're going to have a major hoedown."

--Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Nora Koch can be reached at nkoch@sptimes.com or 727 771-4304.

[Last modified June 7, 2005, 06:31:43]