Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 25, 1990 TAG: 9006250140
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
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.
Now the Campbells want to expand Pirates Cove on Virginia 920 from 23 to 31 spaces. The request is to be heard by the Franklin County Planning Commission this month.
Earlier this year, Jeff Dudley, a Roanoke firefighter and a mobile-home park owner, had an expansion request denied by the supervisors.
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.
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.
While almost everyone involved predicts the eventual passing of temporary housing at the lake, most mobile-home parks have a waiting list of people who want to get in.
The lists got longer recently after developer Ron Willard of Roanoke contracted to pay Annie Pearl Davis of Franklin County 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.
Willard said the terms of the sale provide for all leases to be honored, but he hinted that the rates could climb when leases came up for renewal.
Mobile homes - and their sister residences, towable trailers and fishing shacks - on leased lots were the first housing at the lake. The temporary units often are handed down in families like the old homestead.
Sheila Hutton of Roanoke and her family recently sold their three-room fishing cabin in Indian Ridge Campground. It had been in the family for 16 years.
In every mobile-home or trailer park at the lake there usually are a couple of residences like the Huttons' for sale at any given time because of lifestyle changes.
The Huttons sold because their children are older and the family hasn't been at the lake as much. Al Salem put his furnished mobile home and dock at Foxport Marina on the market a few months ago because he bought a house at Claytor Lake in Pulaski County. Claytor is closer to his Salem home and business, Johnson Foods, than is Smith Mountain.
As the price of land has risen at the lake, fewer and fewer landowners have been willing to lease lots as mobile-home sites.
Lake 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.
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.
Carl Poindexter of Salem, a retired professor and historian, 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 one-room fishing cabins on his 40-acre tract near the 4-H Center in Franklin County.
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.
As lake development has increased, even the condition of mobile homes or trailers has become an issue. A year ago, Kathy and Richard Jensen came from Florida and bought Folly Rec-Land near Burnt Chimney. They renamed it Blue Ridge Campground and established new rules that 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.
by CNB