They told county officials that if they wanted to make it possible to transfer building rights, they would have to design an ordinance to do so.
That statement put the skids under more than one mobile-home park redevelopment deal where big developers had purchased inland parks and waterfront property with the expressed intent of moving the development rights to the waterfront as market-rate units. The most notable of those is Seahorse RV Park on Big Pine Key, where Boca Developers bought the park over a year ago with the intent to transfer the building rights to Rowell’s Marina in Key Largo. The park has been sitting in limbo since then. So the county went to work on a transfer ordinance to allow just that, a proposal that saw its first public airing last week in front of the county’s Development Review Committee. The committee approved the measure. The gist of the new proposal is that it would allow mobile-home park owners to transfer market-rate building units from the park to other sites. If the proposed site is for single-family dwellings, the transfer rate would be one-for-one. If the proposed site is for multi-family units, like the current craze for waterfront condo developments, the transfer rate would be two-for-one. The developer would give the land under the trailer park to the county to retain as affordable housing units. The proposal also states that the county will then lease the park back to the developer at a nominal cost so they can run it as a trailer park, or to an acceptable third party.

Diane Beruldsen, an activist from Stock Island, said she believes the homeowners association might well be an acceptable third party in some cases. The proposed ordinance only kicks in when the county and developer reach an agreement that is in the best interests of the county, the ordinance draft states. There are some potential pitfalls with the proposal, however, according to Drew Trivette, county growth management director. The proposal is not a requirement for the redevelopment of mobile home parks, he told the BOCC. It is rather an incentive to entice the developer not to raze the park. He also admitted that in the case of waterfront parks, the incentive probably didn’t mean much to the developer since waterfront is where they want to take the new projects anyway.

There is also the problem of available Rate of Growth Ordinance permits. The county receives a limited number of building allocations each year based on hurricane evacuation times. It is that dearth of building allocations that drew developers to target mobile home parks as ready-made source of building permits. Trivette told the BOCC during initial discussions on the proposal that the county would have to find a source of affordable allocations to give back to the mobile home parks, since the market-rate transfers would constitute new construction and take the allocations with them. He says there is not a large enough pool of affordable housing permits right now to make this proposal work.

Mayor Mario DiGennarro has been lobbying the state since he took office a year ago to release a bulk amount of affordable housing permits, but has had no success thus far. Without those allocations, the transfer ordinance proposal will not work, said Trivette. The proposal also does not allow the developer to transfer all the units if the zoning of the receiver site doesn’t accommodate the density. Any extra allocations would be given back to the county for the mobile home park. The transfer ordinance, as it exists right now, would seem to be tailor-made for the project Boca Developers wishes with Seahorse, says Beruldsen.

The county planning commission is expected to take up the proposal in its September meetings, and with approval would go to the county commission for final action in either October or November. The county implemented a six-month moratorium on mobile home park redevelopments in May, which runs out in November. With expected hearing schedules, the county commission could forward the proposal to DCA for its approval by the end of the year.

Trivette said this proposal, even though titled a mobile home park protection ordinance, does not save park residents from being evicted and the developer changing the land use to something already allowed in the zoning district. “We weren’t asked to develop a plan to protect mobile home parks, but a plan to work with the private sector to provide developer incentives to help us save mobile home parks,” said Trivette.