Residents Cling to a ‘Treasure’ : Changes Worry Mobile Home Park Dwellers

Arched on gentle bluffs overlooking a curving sweep of the Pacific Ocean, Treasure Island Mobile Home Park in Laguna Beach is, by all accounts, choice property.

“It’s one of four undeveloped, privately owned oceanfront tracts in Orange County,” said Richard A. Hall of Costa Mesa, who, along with some partners, purchased the 27-acre tract last September.

Located just north of Aliso Beach off Coast Highway, the park provides its 500 residents with modest homes and billion-dollar views. But in recent months, they have become alarmed, and agitated, about the transfer of ownership.

Fear Losing Homes

“People fear they’ll be losing their homes,” said Michael Kenney, president of the homeowners’ association. The concern, he said, was a prospectus put out by Hall’s company that calls for developing the land into multimillion-dollar homes and condominiums.

In an interview Wednesday, however, Hall said that he has no immediate plans for such a move and countered that he even had planned to offer long-term leases to the present tenants.

“I’m not saying it will always be a mobile home park, but I have no plans for the foreseeable future,” Hall said. He noted that city zoning and California Coastal Commission plan approvals are among the long, time-consuming steps required before the property could be developed into homes and condos.

Yet despite Hall’s assurances, residents remain worried.

“I don’t care what they say, I know what these people want, and it’s big bucks--big bucks that come from development,” said May Brown, 70, a retiree who has been a resident of Treasure Island for the last 23 years.

“My husband and I moved here because we wanted to spend the rest of our lives here,” she explained. “We love it. But we’re worried about what’s going to happen. You see, we mobile home owners own our homes but not the land under it. And the owner can keep raising the rent until people can’t afford it anymore.”

Brown, who retired after 30 years as a motion picture and television script supervisor in Los Angeles, said her current mobile home rental is $1,100 a month.

“If the rents keep going higher, my husband and I are very worried,” she said. “We’re retired and on fixed income.”

Brown noted that before South Laguna was annexed by Laguna Beach, Treasure Island residents fought a plan for the park to be converted into a $90-million, time-share resort hotel.

In the early 1980s, a partnership of proposed developers won approval from both the Orange County Planning Commission and the state Coastal Commission to build a high-rise, time-share hotel on the park. Tenants were to be relocated to apartments under the plan.

“But we took them to court, and finally it got to the point that it wasn’t financially feasible for the developers to proceed, so they withdrew,” Brown recalled. “If we hadn’t fought back then, we all would have had to move in 1981. Darn right, we fought.”

Laguna Beach Mayor Robert F. Gentry said the city is watching the situation “because we don’t want these longtime residents, many of whom are retired, to lose their homes there.”

Fear and rumors began sweeping the mobile home park more than a year ago when word spread that the two brothers who owned the park, Howard and Warren Hopkins, had plans to sell it.

“We residents made an offer of $40 million for the park, but we never heard firsthand from the owners about our offer,” Kenney said. He added that he later learned the park had been sold for $43 million to a partnership which includes the Richard A. Hall Co. of Costa Mesa. Escrow on the sale is scheduled to close in September.

Kenney said residents became fearful that the new owners planned to oust them. The uneasiness was aggravated when the residents’ association was leaked a copy of Hall’s prospectus for developing the property, Kenney said.

The prospectus said, among other things, that Hall “intends to convert the subject parcel from a mobile home park to a residential development which would include about 50 home sites and a mid-rise condominium development. The subject property is currently zoned VSR-2 (Visitor-Serving Recreation Area), which allows boating, residential homes, condominiums, retail, hotel and motel uses.”

Hall acknowledged that his prospectus called for developing the mobile home park. But he said that that was a “long-range plan” and that current tenants should not worry about it.

“The longer we hold the property, the more valuable it gets,” he said. “But obviously that property at Treasure Island is not going to be for mobile homes forever.”

To head off any quick attempt by new owners to develop the property, the Treasure Island Residents Owners Assn. last December petitioned the Laguna Beach City Council to put a legal hold, or moratorium, on the acceptance and processing of any new development applications for mobile home parks in the city. The council agreed to the request, and a temporary moratorium is now in place, Gentry said.

“The city staff and the City Council have been very supportive and sympathetic to the residents of Treasure Island,” Kenney said. Nonetheless, he noted that the moratorium is scheduled to end this winter, and the city must decide what permanent zoning to put on Treasure Island.

“We want the land permanently zoned for mobile homes,” Kenney said. Hall, by contrast, said his company hopes to keep the land at its present zoning, which allows home and condominium construction.

“Our concern is once Hall owns the land, he will cause rents to go up considerably higher because he’ll be interested in moving us out of our homes and developing that land,” Kenney said.

Gentry, in a separate interview, said he also got the impression that Hall’s plans called for developing Treasure Island into home sites and building condos on part of the land. “I was told that the company would move the tenants into the condos and let them live there for the same rent they are now paying,” Gentry said.

The mayor added: “That may sound OK, but I found out that these mobile home residents very much prefer to live in their own homes. They don’t want to move into condos or apartments.

“Now, the city could get more tax money if it favored apartments and hotels for that land, but getting more money is not our interest. Our interest is in seeing that these people who live there are not uprooted from their neighborhood. We’re going to work to see that they’re well taken care of.”