Country Meadows deadline expires

Tenants form HOA


The initial 90-day window for Country Meadows residents to put in an offer to purchase their trailer park expired on Wednesday. Tenants have requested a 90-day extension from the current owner, but have not yet received a reply. 

The mobile home park, which is home to around 350 residents, recently went on the market for $2.5 million. It is believed that an offer from a third-party buyer has been made and accepted, though no further details are known.

Under such conditions, the Colorado Mobile Home Park Act allows residents 90 days in which to try and purchase the property themselves. In an effort to do that, homeowners in Country Meadows reached out to Gunnison County for assistance — and have recently formed a non-profit association called the Organización de Nuevas Esperanzas (ONE). Now that the 90-day deadline has expired, the move is seen as a way to create more protections for the neighborhood and advocate for themselves in front of a new prospective owner.

Fifty-one percent of the homeowners agreed to assign their rights to the county to make a potential offer on their behalf, but the seller, River Walk, LLC, failed to respond to repeated communication attempts and inquiries. 

The newly formed board meets on Wednesdays. Gunnison County Commissioner Roland Mason said he made it clear the county did not have time to pull together financing without going through due diligence or having some kind of communication with the owner. 

Mobile home park protection legislation “doesn’t give us a lot of teeth to really force the owner to deal with us,” Mason said. 

Unrelated to the current situation involving Country Meadows, the state is seeking comment from county leaders on a proposed Department of Local Affairs rule-making regarding management of the Mobile Home Park Oversight Program. County commissioners on Tuesday approved comments drafted by County Attorney Matthew Hoyt. The feedback will not impact the legislation itself, only how it is administered.

“Looking at (Country Meadows) it shows me that sometimes legislation gets passed and there are so many compromises that it takes away the impact it could have had,” said Mason. “Hopefully some of our comments will get in, not just for this issue we’ve been dealing with, but there are four or five others in the community.”

President of ONE, Gregorio Luna, said a huge part of the board’s mission is to seek stability and a sense of security because “this park means a lot, it’s their home.” Now that the time has expired, the organization’s immediate goal is to focus on writing and adopting their bylaws in order to prepare for any possible outcome.  

The board of directors is looking for ways to keep the mobile home park and to create a good basis for communication between tenants and the new owner, said Annie Beall, a local mobile home researcher and advocate who has been working with residents.  

“It is a bit of waiting,” Beall said. “But also the resident association and their legal representatives are and have been in communication with the county and other community organizations to figure out how to address some of the more immediate issues that the neighborhood is facing and how to protect the park long term.”

As the deadline expired, the housing security for residents became more uncertain as the owner remained unresponsive. Their fear stemmed from a national wave of investment firms around the state seeking to purchase parks and transition them into new developments, Beall said. 

“In a lot of cities throughout the United States, mobile home parks are on the last available land in dense communities,” she said. 

It’s different in Gunnison, she said, because these parks aren’t the last pieces of land available, unlike Fort Collins or Durango, which have experienced the intense pressures of expanding communities. Parks elsewhere in Colorado are selling for $20-30 million. 

Rolando Fernandez has lived in Country Meadows for eight years. Flowers bloomed in the front yard and his dog Chester barked from behind the fence. It’s been a stressful time, he said. 

“I want to try to do what I need to do to stay in my home,” Fernandez said. 

(Bella Biondini can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or bella@gunnisontimes.com.)

 

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