Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 15, 1990 TAG: 9006160428
SECTION: SMITH MOUNTAIN TIMES PAGE: SMT-1 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
To avoid moving, the Danville couple bought the trailer park.
"We had a lot of money invested in our trailer, like everybody else does, and we didn't want to lose it," Carolyn Campbell said.
The neighbors felt relieved when the Campbells bought the park on Virginia 920, "because they didn't want to be pushed out."
Now the Campbells want to expand Pirates Cove from 23 to 31 spaces on five acres. The request is to be heard by the Franklin County Planning Commission this month.
Earlier this year, Jeff Dudley, another mobile-home park owner, had an expansion request denied by the Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Charles Ellis, who represents the Gills Creek District, said the supervisors were not upset at the "concept of mobile homes. They were upset at his concept."
Ellis said Dudley's plans were too general and that the supervisors were concerned that Dudley wanted to put older trailers on the sites. "I have no objection to mobile-home parks," Ellis said. "I think there is a need for them, but I think it should be regulated."
It is getting tougher almost everywhere to obtain approval for mobile-home developments, and it is an especially sensitive issue at Smith Mountain Lake, with its resort property prices and increase in subdivision development.
Today's mobile homes, however, are a far cry from the housing that inspired Franklin County's health officer in 1968 to comment that Smith Mountain Lake is "beginning to look like a shanty town."
Health officer Rose Marie Morecock's concern was more with the outdoor toilets that lined Smith Mountain Lake's shore than with the accompanying mobile homes and fishing shacks. Sewerage regulations cleared up the privy issue.
But the issue of houses vs. mobile homes and trailers will clear up only when land prices get so high no one can justify using lots as mobile-home sites.
Developer George Sutherland considers his 34-unit mobile home park a land cache. "When I run out of something to do, I'll develop it," he said.
"There is no way that trailer parks will survive at the lake. Anyone that has one is just coasting," Sutherland said.
Coasting or not, mobile-home park owners at the lake are getting requests from prospective tenants. Most parks have a waiting list. The lists have grown since developer Ron Willard contracted to pay Annie Pearl Davis more than $500,000 for her 10-acre trailer park near his exclusive Water's Edge project.
With the pending sale, the 25 mobile home owners in the Davis park feared their vacation spots were in jeopardy. But one renter, Randy L. Raynor of Danville, is holding up the sale by suing Davis. Raynor is asking that Davis honor his lease and option to purchase his lot.
Willard said the terms of the sale provide for all leases to be honored. Some leases run through 1994, he said, and some also have a renewal clause. But Willard hinted that the rates would climb after that.
Although Davis owns a second mobile-home park and can handle some displaced renters, others have started a search for new sites. There are a good number of mobile home parks on the lake, but finding an open site is difficult.
Mobile homes, towable trailers and fishing shacks on leased lots often are sold by people to friends or handed down in families like the old homestead. But almost everyone involved predicts the eventual passing of temporary housing at the lake.
Nelson Palmer said he could sell his mobile home park on Virginia 920, invest the money and make more in interest than he's earning now. But he's been in the Penhook area since before the dam was built, and he likes it there.
Palmer runs Palmer's Trailer Park and Marina, which has 75 sites and a view of Willard's Water's Edge development. People look at mobile home parks as an eyesore these days, Palmer said. "I don't think it would be possible to put in new trailer parks now."
Carl Poindexter, a retired professor and historian given to speaking with a flourish, said, "The chances are that there will be a shrinkage in the modest accommodations for boaters and fishermen."
Since the mid-1970s, Poindexter has been leasing his one-room fishing cabins, complete with stove and refrigerator "but devoid of any water facilities," on his 40-acre tract near the 4-H Center. Renters use a community bathhouse and water supply.
Poindexter said he had one tenant who came to his cabin only once a year. "He said he got his money's worth just knowing it was there."
He has about 30 rental units, built gradually over the years, but he acknowledges that the rental cabins are an "inferior value use" for the land. Poindexter said he intends to keep renting the cabins, however.
The condition of mobile homes or trailers can be a problem, said Kathy and Richard Jensen. A year ago, when they bought Folly Rec-Land near Burnt Chimney and renamed it Blue Ridge Campground, the new rules displaced some renters.
The Jensens said they wanted a nice recreational vehicle park, and there were some "old rust buckets" on the site. About 30 percent of the renters had to move, Richard Jensen said. The Jensens, who live at the campground in a remodeled log cabin, allow only trailers that can be towed, no mobile homes.
Andy Dudley, a Martinsville businessman who has 20-some trailers in a park near the Contentment Island subdivision, believes trailers are the one way that middle-income people can enjoy the lake.
He said, however, that he has renters who are "almost as wealthy as those who own houses" at the lake. "Some people just don't want to invest a half-million dollars."
Dudley said he also thinks there are "some people with a house on one side of the lake who want to control the other side."
When Dudley's brother and mother, Jeff and Augusta, tried to expand the park they operate off of Virginia 601, they got opposition from residents in nearby subdivisions of Key Lakewood, Windmere and Deer Creek.
Jeff Dudley, a Roanoke fireman, said he was upset that the expansion was opposed by residents. "Hogwash," is how he reacts to the residents' claim that the trailer park expansion would hurt their property values.
He said he had planned to use trailers no more than 5 years old.
The appearance of the trailers that populate the parks is at the heart of any controversy about their existence.
"I like for them to put in a nice trailer with a nice canvas," said Adolphus Lumpkin. He also said he has had a few renters through the years who didn't live up to his standards.
Lumpkin and his wife, Juanita, started building Lumpkin's Marina and Mobile Home Park in Pittsylvania County when the lake filled up in the mid-1960s. "I got some of same people we started out with," Lumpkin said. Most renters of his 75 or so spaces are from nearby Danville, Lynchburg and Martinsville, but he has some from New Jersey and North Carolina.
Lumpkin has about a mile of waterfront on his 360-acre property and a view out the cove to Ron Willard's Water's Edge. The future of such a tract of land is summed up by a couple of casual exchanges Lumpkin has had with Willard.
"I've seen him a time or two. He asked me if I had a notion of selling it," Lumpkin said.
by CNB