Mobile-Home Park Plan Irks Neighbors : Westminster Protest Cites Crowding

People living near a Westminster mobile home park Saturday protested a proposal to add 121 spaces to the park, citing eventual overcrowding and traffic congestion if the developer’s plan to reduce the width of a street is approved.

About 150 people, many with placards, marched around Los Alisos Mobile Home Estates, where owner Lee Miller wants to develop five acres he owns and on city land he hopes to acquire. He is also seeking permission to cap a flood control channel, claiming it as his own, and to narrow two city streets for the project at Dorothy Drive and Melanie Lane.

“We’re not against Miller developing the land he owns,” said Don Heise, who has lived in the neighborhood for 21 years. “We’re against reducing the size of the street, eliminating sidewalks and bridging a drainage canal for private development involving a very dense development.”

Tim Flanagan described the proposed “city’s giveaway” as being the size of more than six city lots, about 45,000 square feet.

“I’ve got my assessor’s tax bill, and my parcel, which I bought in 1988, showed that my land was worth $104,958. You multiply that by 6.3 lots and Lee Miller is getting land valued at $661,235 for the price of asking for it.”

Quiet Neighborhood

Equally frustrating, said Flanagan, Heise, and their neighbors, is that Miller’s proposal will transform their once-quiet neighborhood into a busy, highly traveled area.

Heise said that Dorothy Drive is one of only two streets that provide access from the neighborhood to the south and west.

Moreover, parking at the mobile home park already is inadequate, he said.

“Right now, he is allowed two parking places per unit with one extra parking space for every seven units for visitors. (That’s) totally inadequate for the size of that proposal,” Heise said. “With 121 units, we’re talking about an additional 360 people, and for his recreation area, he’s putting in one gas grill.”

Miller could not be reached for comment on the protest.

Under Miller’s plans, 121 single and duplex mobile homes would eventually be added on five acres to the park. He will seek the City Council’s approval for the expansion at its Sept. 12 meeting.

Miller, who has owned the land since 1962, originally wanted to close Dorothy Drive, but the city’s Traffic Commission denied the bid.

When he came before the city Planning Commission recently, Miller dropped that idea and proposed reducing the width of Dorothy Drive and a portion of Lee Drive from 60 feet to 45 feet, which the commission approved, said Don Vestal, Westminster’s community development director.

Miller has revised that plan and is now proposing to reduce Dorothy Lane to 28 feet, Vestal said. On the eastern portion of Miller’s property where Dorothy runs into Melanie Lane, he is proposing to narrow the street more, with a sidewalk on one side, Vestal said. Miller is expected to ask the Traffic Commission for approval of that plan on Tuesday night.

Councilwoman Joy L. Neugebauer said she was undecided on the project, suggesting that the Traffic Commission’s leanings would probably help shape her feelings about the expansion.

“I will base my decision on the project’s merits,” Neugebauer said, adding that “we most certainly need to increase our housing stock if we’re going to bring down these high home prices and make them available to all.”