'She's worried sick': Fort Meade may be on verge of selling low-rent mobile home park

Fort Meade may be unique among Florida cities in owning a mobile-home community.

But that distinction could soon end.

The city has received an offer to buy the Fort Meade Mobile Home Park, which dates to at least the 1950s.

The Fort Meade City Commission voted unanimously in April to approve the sale, as long as the prospective buyer, Wildflower Communities, adheres to the primary conditions of the offer, which carries a price tag of $4.85 million.

Wildflower Communities, a New York company, began a 60-day “due diligence” period on May 19. Closing on the sale is tentatively set for Aug. 17, City Manager Jan Bagnall said.

The park, which abuts U.S. 98 just west of the Peace River, originated as a tourist camp in the 1940s, according to a city staff report. The city has owned the 23-acre facility since at least 1956, records from the Polk County Property Appraiser’s Office show.

The Ledger could not determine whether any other cities in Florida own mobile home parks. The Florida League of Cities does not keep such records.

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Of the facility’s 180 dwellings, about 100 are used by seasonal residents and 80 by year-round residents, the city staff report said.

The community, open to residents 55 and older, is showing its age. The park contains a mixture of single- and double-wide homes, and many appear to be several decades old.

Why is Fort Meade entertaining an offer on the park it has owned for decades? Bagnall said the city loses about $70,000 a year on the property, and he provided records to support that assertion.

Bagnall said that lot rents in the park have remained well below market rates for decades. (Seasonal and full-time residents pay the same rents.)

Bagnall said the city had instituted only one small increase in rent rates over nearly two decades before his hiring as city manager in 2021. At that point, some tenants were paying only $145 a month, and the rent covered water, sewer service and a fire assessment, he said.

“It was probably the lowest cost mobile home park in the southeast United States,” Bagnall said.

A city staff report from last August listed rent rates for what it labeled comparable parks in the area. Those ranged from $325 to $525 per month.

Under an agreement signed in 1993, the city may raise rents only 10% per year. Bagnall said that past city managers have also opted to defer adding amenities in favor of avoiding rent hikes.

Bagnall said that Fort Meade’s expenses for running the park have risen significantly in recent years. He said the Florida Rural Water Association conducted a study in 2020 of the city’s water and sewer funding and recommended increases over two years of 50% for water rates and 25% for sewer rates.

That would make the programs self-sustaining, so that the city did not have to use general funds to subsidize the services, Bagnall said.

The 2022 staff report contained charts showing the city’s costs for operating the park, covering water and sewage, property taxes, management, insurance, amenities and other expenses. The report indicated that the city lost money on two of four rent categories in 2021, three of four in 2022 and projected to lose on all four in 2023.

Fort Meade received an offer for the mobile home park last year, and Bagnall took it to the City Commission. The proposed buyer offered $4.825 million, only slightly less than Wildwood Properties is now willing to pay. City commissioners voted against the sale after some residents raised questions about the condition of other properties owned by the prospective buyer.

But commissioners said they would leave open the door to selling the park later.

Move follows rent increase

At Bagnall’s direction, the city and the park’s HOA signed a Memorandum of Understanding in August. Under the agreement, the city planned to raise rents 10% per year for five years, yielding an overall hike of 61% by 2027.

At that date, monthly rents would range from $235 to $317, a city chart showed.

Though a previous president of the homeowners’ association signed the MOU, the residents’ group filed a request for mediation less than five months later, on Jan. 4. In the petition, the HOA listed four points of dispute. It said the lot rent increase was unreasonable; the increase had made lot rent rates unreasonable; a decrease in services or utilities was not matched by a reduction in rent; and a change in the rules and regulations was unreasonable.

The mediation was delayed because the lawyer for the HOA, Daniel Perry of Orlando, was suspended for 60 days earlier this year after The Florida Bar reviewed a complaint against him. The Bar found that Perry “engaged in a pattern of misconduct during his representation of several mobile park homeowners’ associations,” reporting that he filed frivolous lawsuits, violated the confidentiality provisions of the Florida Mediation Act and engaged in conflicts of interest.

Perry’s suspension has been lifted, and the two sides are scheduled for a first mediation meeting later this month.

Mike Marchand, the HOA’s president, had little to say about the possible sale of the park when reached by phone.

“The park belongs to the city, so they can do what they like,” said Marchand, a seasonal resident. “Other than that, I don’t have any comment at this time.”

Potential buyer promises upgrades

Karen Fan, founder and principal of Wildflower Communities, said her company is looking to satisfy the need for quality, affordable housing.

"I made an unsolicited offer for (the) Mobile Home Park, as I was following how this small, historic city of Fort Meade had big plans for future economic growth, and I wanted to contribute to making a difference in this community by way of responsibly owning and operating a manufactured housing community here," Fan said by email.

Bagnall shared an overview the company provided in making its offer to buy the Fort Meade facility. The packet says that Wildflower owns at least three parks in Florida — in Jacksonville, Belleview (Marion County) and Sebastian (Indian River County).

A website for Whispering Palms in Sebastian shows the community has a mixture of manufactured homes and recreational vehicles. The facility offers swimming pools, tennis courts, a putting green and three activities centers.

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The packet says that Wildflower Communities would upgrade amenities at Fort Meade Mobile Home Park by building a pickleball court, would increase events at the community center and would repair roads in the community. The company also plans to hire a professional property manager and to bring in new manufactured homes for any vacant lots.

Fan said her company would also bring in a handyman "trained to our highest standards" and replace the current, utilitarian sign with a sandblasted entrance sign.

Residents might wonder if a private buyer would be bound by the agreements that Fort Meade previously reached with the HOA. William Cruse, first vice president of the HOA, said he would expect the mediation process to continue with Wildflower replacing the city, if a sale is reached.

Would the limits on rent increases remain in place?

“My understanding is that the new buyer, first of all, will be able to institute rules that are what they want to do,” Bagnall said. “Now, they may be bound by some previous agreements, but they're also very much aware of those agreements, and they're doing their due diligence on the legalities of those agreements – and/or, what I would call a legal strategy to counter those agreements. That's up to them. I had a legal strategy ready, if we had to go that route.”

Residents: Park neglected for years

Residents expressed a range of complaints about the city’s handling of the park.

Terry Booker, the past president of the HOA, sat on the porch of his 1989 home Tuesday morning as goldfish swam in a plastic pond and a fountain bubbled. Booker, 75, said he opposed the sale, even as he harshly criticized the city’s management of the facility.

“Well, I wish they wouldn't sell it,” said Booker, a resident of 13 years. “But they really don't have a clue how to operate it.”

He added: “I have called them slumlords, and that's probably not nice to say. But I’ve had past city managers look me in the eye and shake my hand and tell me they were going to do something. And the very next month, someone from the city says, ‘He lied to you.’”

As an example, Booker said that when the loan for construction of the activities center was paid off in 2015, residents suggested that the city devote money equivalent to the past loan payments to build a new recreation hall. He said city commissioners agreed to do that but never followed through.

Booker cited a decline in amenities at the park. A recreation hall, which was used for dart tournaments and luncheons when the park hosted shuffleboard tournaments, decayed to the point the county condemned it and the building was demolished last year, he said.

Booker said the city built a 4,800-square-foot activities center specifically for residents but now rents it out regularly, limiting its use by park dwellers. He said residents previously had exclusive use of a golf course, but a few years ago city leaders made it a municipal course.

Booker questioned Bagnall’s assertion that Fort Meade loses money on its ownership of the park.

“It's always kind of been a moneymaker for them,” he said. “We've checked the past budgets, and no matter how much they may cry about it, they always transfer money into the general fund after all the bills are paid, after everything, they transfer money into the general fund. So you can't lose money and keep doing that year after year.”

Rather than selling the park, Booker suggested that the city install a competent manager to run the community.

Betsy Humphreys, a former snowbird who became a full-time resident this year, also lamented Fort Meade’s failure to maintain the community. She said many streets are in poor condition, and the city recently repaved only a few. She also complained about a failure to trim trees near homes and she and a neighbor had to pay $3,000 for tree work after a branch fell on her home during a storm.

Humphreys, 66, resides in the oldest section of the community, occupying a structure built in 1969. She pays the lowest level of rent, $145 monthly before the increases agreed to last year, but she isn’t happy about the prospect of rent increases over five consecutive years.

“Most people in here are on a very fixed income,” she said. “Like my neighbor – if they raise the rent, she won't be able to afford to live in here. She doesn't know where she's going to go, and she’s worried sick. Well, all of us are.”

Humphreys isn’t persuaded by the notion that Fort Meade is overdue for increasing rents at the park. She said past city managers are to blame.

“That's not our fault, though,” she said. “Why are they trying to recuperate it all at once?”

Humphreys also objected to what she considered unfair financial burdens on top of the rent increases. She said that early this year the city demanded that residents pay deposits amounting to two months of rent.

Booker said he failed to understand that surprise bill. Security deposits are common in apartment complexes, providing the owners with a financial cushion against possible damage left behind by tenants. But he said residents of the park own their homes and rent only the lots.

Bagnall said Fort Meade ordered the payments for two reasons. The city has traditionally collected rent two months late, and some residents have departed without paying their remaining balance. He said some have also left behind mobile homes in such bad condition that the city had to clean or demolish them, accruing costs written off as bad debt.

Residents were given the option of spreading the security payments over the course of the year, Bagnall said.

Humphreys also complained about a fire assessment fee passed along this year to park residents. Bagnall said that Fort Meade enacted a fire assessment fee in 2019 and only this year began enforcing it for residents of the mobile home park.

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The city manager said all the changes were presented in a changed prospectus after Fort Meade received approval from the state.

'We would prefer to have kept it local'

Cruse said he hopes the city will retain ownership of the park.

“I'm not happy with the fact that the park is being sold,” Cruse said. “We would have preferred to negotiate and resolve our issues. At this time, we were unable to do that. I would have preferred just to see some way to work it out with the city, that they could remain the owner of the park rather than sell it to an outsider, someone from out of state. We would prefer to have kept it local.”

Cruse, 73, is a seasonal resident from Ohio. He said he has lived part-time at the Fort Meade facility for about a decade.

Cruse acknowledged that rents in the park are unusually low. He said he would be willing to pay more in rent if it meant the city would improve amenities.

“I think this is the general consensus of the whole HOA, that they are more concerned with the amenities than they are the actual raising of the rent,” Cruse said.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Residents nervous as Fort Meade considers selling its mobile home park