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Homeowners gird for a fight

"I hope you are prepared," their leader tells the group of Bay Pines Mobile Home Park residents.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published May 21, 2006

"This is what I've been preparing you people for for over a year," said Plenski, head of the park's mobile home owners association. "I hope you are prepared for this fight."

Last Monday, the Seminole park was sold to local developer John Loder, who has announced he plans to evict residents of the 507-unit park as soon as legally possible. Law requires he give residents at least a 60-day notice to vacate.

In Plenski's trademark rousing style, the retired steelworker exhorted the owners to stick together and resist threats or buyout deals as they fight to make sure they get what state law promises in such situations - "suitable, affordable and adequate homes before we get out."

The association has already filed suit against attorneys Dennis DeLoach Jr. and Peter Hofstra, the trustees for the E.J. Bickley Trust, which owned the 55-acre park and the adjacent 3-acre Bay View Mobile Home Park, both of which were sold to Loder.

The action is likely just the first of many, Plenski promised.

"We will take on anything he throws at us," Plenski said of Loder at the Thursday night meeting. "It'll probably end up in court."

Most of the owners appeared to support Plenski, applauding at times. Dollars flowed freely into a 50-50 drawing, the proceeds of which were earmarked for attorneys' fees. And, as people filed out of the meeting, someone cried out, "SOLIDARITY!"

It is unclear what Loder has planned for the property, but at one time he wanted to buy the nearby Harbor Lights Mobile Home Park for a condominium and townhouse project. Loder also has purchased the Snell Isle Apartments and plans to turn them into condominiums.

The Bay Pines lawsuit is the most recent one to be filed by mobile home owners in parks that are slated for redevelopment, an indication that mobile home owners are not going to make it easy for developers to displace them.

The spate of lawsuits is a stark contrast to the situation at Parsley Mobile Home Park when it was sold to Loder and his Sun Vista Development Group LLC in March 2005.

He paid $28-million plus $500,000 in extensions for the 20-plus acres at 17715 Gulf Blvd. He plans a $150-million gated condominium and housing development there.

Instead of fighting, most of Parsley's more than 300 mobile home owners left until only nine were left on the day of the sale. The former owner had offered $3,000 for singlewides and $6,000 for doublewides.

Plenski referred to Parsley in his speech, saying that park "was the easiest catch" Loder ever had. If the owners stick together, Plenski said, Bay Pines will be a harder acquisition.

That's also true of other parks elsewhere in the county where mobile home owners have chosen to fight.

Consider Anchor North Bay Mobile Home Park in the Oldsmar area overlooking Old Tampa Bay. About half the 200 owners took state money and left.

Of the remaining, 38 filed suit, alleging owners misled mobile home buyers when they professed no intention of redevelopment. That suit settled in May for an undisclosed amount. The remaining owners must be out by June 30.

At the Golden Lantern Mobile Home Park, homeowner Charles Plancon is fighting the park's sale at the government level and in the courts.

Plancon has alleged, among other things, that the county violated its own rules by granting a land-use change to increase the density on the Golden Lantern when it is in a Level One evacuation zone. County rules limit new development in those zones to five units per acre.

Bay Pines' lawsuit against the trustees hinges on a problem with the prospectus. According to the lawsuit, the prospectus that mobile home owners have promises Bay Pines would remain a park until at least Dec. 31, 2020.

They allege if park owners updated the prospectus to indicate otherwise, they were never provided copies.

Deloach and Hofstra have denied the allegations. They provided an affidavit to the purchaser saying they had adhered to state law.

Plenski also heads a growing group of activist mobile home owners called Floridians Against Injustice to Residents of Mobile/Manufactured Homes, or FAIR.

FAIR's decision to fight came after months of pleas to county and city commissions and councils.

The elderly, the disabled and the poor told of the loss of homes, dreams and communities as developers homed in on the last of the large tracts of land in the county. But those pleas failed to stop land-use changes and rezonings.

"The bleeding heart stuff is over now," Plenski said. "Everyone in a nonresident-owned park is on the block . ... We're going to fight everything that comes down the line.

"We feel we have a better chance in the court system than going to the commissioners."

[Last modified May 21, 2006, 09:24:53]