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RV park residents get boot ... but no check

Condos, shops and a hotel will replace an RV resort, where folks do not get the financial help their mobile home park brethren receive.

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published April 23, 2007

GIBSONTON - The letter arrived April 3. It was the bombshell that residents feared. "At this time, we would like to inform you ..." owners of the Alafia River RV Resort began. The residents had less than 90 days to get out, the letter stated. Some have lived on the tree-lined property that rolls down to the river for more than 30 years. The letter was the first official confirmation residents had that anything was amiss. But many people in the park had seen a sign posted at the Gibsonton Drive entrance in March that announced the Shoppes of Alafia. They found the door to the recreation hall locked. Inside, where residents had coffee-and-doughnut socials every Wednesday morning, where they played pinochle and penny-ante poker and even held church services, an organ and a piano collect dust.

The park, on 40 acres just east of Interstate 75, is changing. Owners in August got the commercial zoning they needed to build 350 condominiums there, plus shops and a 150-room hotel.

"It's inevitable," said Debra Jones, who has lived at the park since the 1980s. "They don't want to make $300 a month in lot rentals. They want big bucks."

County officials agree. Planner Brian Grady said he has seen more mobile home park owners asking to change their land use in the past two years.

Investors are mostly buying parks where residents lease the ground beneath their units, said Warren Weathers, the county's deputy property appraiser.

That includes parks like the Alafia River RV Resort, where scores of residents have left in recent months after being alarmed by a string of warning signs.

The owners wanted to give residents more time, according to general partner Lawrence Bauman. But an overhaul of the park's wastewater treatment system would have been needed if residents stayed into July, said Alex Giannini, Bauman's partner.

* * *

The weekend before they were to appear before a zoning hearing master, owners called a meeting with residents.

The owners told residents that they had no immediate plans to develop the park but wanted to keep their options open, said Jones, who attended the meeting.

The next week, a flier invited residents to meet with owners again "to brainstorm ideas for improvements to the park."

In August, the owners got the zoning they needed for the hotel, condos and 60,000 square feet of office space. In approving the commercial zoning, county commissioners signed off on a zoning hearing master's recommendation and an earlier court ruling that the community is a recreational-vehicle park.

That means residents who are forced to move aren't entitled to the financial help that state law requires for residents of mobile home parks.

Still, few tenants at the Alafia River RV Resort could simply turn the ignition switch and drive away.

The community includes mobile homes, manufactured homes and park models, which resemble traditional mobile homes but are smaller than 400 square feet. Hauling the park models elsewhere costs $2,800 to $7,000, said Tampa mobile home mover Adam Brooks.

State law also lets mobile home park residents stay for six months before owners can evict them because of a land use change. But because Alafia River is an RV park, the required notice for residents shrinks to 15 days.

In January, a "for sale" sign went up along Gibsonton Drive. Still, no word went out to residents.

* * *

Zeke and Johanne Forney met three years ago at the park's recreation center. He was a retired plumber with leathery skin. She had been coming to the park from Pennsylvania since 1983.

The Forneys are moving to Hidden River, a Riverview mobile home park for retirees. They'll miss the Northern Lights Show, skits the seasonal residents put on each spring before their annual trek home.

And they will miss the parades. Residents organized costume parades for Halloween, Christmas and St. Patrick's Day. They'd march through the park banging pots and pans or ringing dinner bells.

"Anything they could come up with," Forney said.

* * *

By February, owners had dropped the idea of selling the property. A new sign went up: The Shoppes of Alafia would open in 2008. Now leasing.

Since the first sign went up, Juanita Deckoning asked neighbors and the park manager what was happening.

Her worries about the park increased in March, when a new sign appeared: The Shoppes of Alafia was now a hazy watercolor, like a New Yorker cartoon.

"No one knew anything," said Deckoning, 65. "Until yesterday."

That was the day the letter came.

Owners wouldn't be collecting lot-rental fees for May and June, it said. Residents would have to leave by noon June 29, when workers will shut off power and utilities and destroy any remaining units.

"The reality is that this is an RV park, a transient park," said Giannini, a retired dentist. "It's sad for those that have been there, but the time has come."

An expiring wastewater permit forced his hand, Giannini said.

Had it not, he might have been able to give residents more time.

Either way, mobile home and RV parks are quickly fading into the past, said Weathers, the county appraiser.

"We've gone from being the land of cheap, easy living to where anything near the waterfront or developed areas has become expensive land," he said. "It's part of the natural economic cycle."

* * *

Debra Jones has taped a for sale sign in the window of her 1999 home. She's asking $14,500.

"Obviously, it's not being sold because nobody's going to buy it," she said. At 49, she is too young to move into a 55-and-older park. But Bobby, her husband, turns 55 in August.

Being uprooted like this reminds her of the homeless. "Does anybody realize that circumstances like that are exactly what little it takes" to be homeless? she said. "That could be me," she said. "It might be me."

Andrew Meacham can be reached at 661-2431 or ameacham@sptimes.com.

[Last modified April 23, 2007, 01:25:25]