Lakeville steps in over concerns of ‘severe lack of investment’ at expanding mobile home park

For most of the quarter century Jilene Christensen has resided in North Creek mobile home park, the community has been a pleasant place to live.

Workers maintained residents’ driveways and removed weeds, Christensen said. Lot rent at the park, which lies near the Lakeville-Farmington border, ticked up but remained manageable.

“It was easy and relaxed and enjoyable to live here,” she said.

All that changed in October 2021, residents contend, when a Utah-based company called Havenpark Communities purchased North Creek. Since then, residents say their lot rent has skyrocketed by hundreds of dollars while parts of the park have fallen into disrepair, with crumbling driveways, rusty playground equipment and mailboxes with missing doors.

Now, Havenpark plans to add 130 single-wide trailers south of the existing community. The Lakeville City Council greenlit the project in February with a consequential catch: As part of the expansion, the company must remedy a spate of problems afflicting the current neighborhood, including resurfacing all driveways, upgrading the playground, installing new mailboxes and updating signage.

In a statement, a Havenpark spokesperson said a recent $500,000 investment in the park allowed the company to repave roads, upgrade water infrastructure and renovate the community office, among other improvements.

And this year, workers will begin many of the maintenance projects council members mandated — part of the company’s effort to “create enduring value for our current and future residents.”

“Havenpark always planned to make additional investments into the existing community in conjunction with the expansion,” a spokesperson wrote. “The city approval process has taken longer than anticipated.”

Lakeville Mayor Luke Hellier, however, said a visit to the park last summer affirmed residents’ concern that the owner isn’t “pulling their end of the bargain on maintenance.” He added the city has limited authority to mandate improvements at private developments like North Creek.

“I just think it’s too bad that it took them wanting to expand the park and adding more units for our ability as a city to hold them accountable,” Hellier said.

Two Lakeville council members blamed some of the issues on previous owners while arguing Havenpark hasn’t done enough to fix the conditions it inherited.

Amber Kippley, a resident, said it took Havenpark more than six months to remove remnants of a tree that fell near her daughter’s house. (A Havenpark spokesperson said the company regretted the delay but endeavors to address maintenance requests in a timely manner.)

“There’s all these increases, but there’s nothing to show for it,” said Christensen, who pays $750 in monthly lot rent for a property that once cost her $515 a month.

Plans for North Creek got underway in 1984, with about 100 mobile homes. More construction added 60 homes two years later, Lakeville Community Development Director Tina Goodroad said at a recent meeting.

In 1989, and again almost a decade later, plans were submitted for 141 additional structures. Those efforts never happened, however, and for decades, the property south of the existing neighborhood remained zoned for a manufactured home park that didn’t materialize.

Until now. The new development will border another mobile home park, Country View. But many residents there aren’t happy about the addition, either.

Among their concerns: construction vehicles, then new North Creek commuters, will aggravate traffic. A Havenpark spokesperson said a traffic study indicated infrastructure improvements aren’t needed.

Other residents worry the expansion will spoil a field that’s long served as a spot for residents to walk their dogs and kids to ride bikes.

Clifton Colley, who moved to Country View in 1978, worries a proposed fence dividing his neighborhood from the North Creek addition will force him to tear down part of a structure he built for his lawnmower. The park, he said, is a special place — and he wants it to stay that way.

“We went all over the place,” he said, recalling trips to Rosemount and Jordan decades ago to house-hunt for his young family. “And this was the best park.”

Dan Gustafson, a landscape architect who built Country View in 1972 and still owns it, agreed.

Gustafson pointed to his park’s amenities and relative affordability — new residents pay $695 in monthly lot rent, he said — amid an industry that’s undergoing changes he finds worrisome.

In his telling, corporations are increasingly snatching up mobile home parks from aging owners, then hiking up the lot rent for residents who have no place to go.

Gustafson said he’s witnessing that pattern play out at North Creek.

“It’s troubling to me what they’re doing,” he said of recent industry changes. “I think it’s all about the money.”

A Havenpark spokesperson said the company aims to ensure rent increases “remain as manageable as possible.” Lot rent at the park, the spokesperson added, is in line with area market rates, with annual increases averaging around $60 per year.

The day Lakeville’s elected officials were set to vote on permitting the North Creek expansion, Council Member Joshua Lee went for a drive around the park.

His impressions? A “severe lack of investment” had caused conditions to deteriorate.

That night, Lee and his colleagues listened as North Creek and Country View residents slammed the project. Then elected officials pressed a Havenpark executive with questions of their own.

Will the company require current North Creek residents to modify their homes to resemble the new builds?

“That’s not our intent,” said Jay Van Tassell, Havenpark’s vice president of capital projects.

How will Havenpark address concerns about an uptick in crime? The firm conducts thorough background checks of prospective residents and bars people with felony convictions from moving in, Van Tassell said.

Lee said elected officials were firm that Havenpark needs to make changes. But the council, he explained, doesn’t have much latitude to deny a conditional use permit if a company’s application meets standards the city sets.

Minutes before council approved the permit Feb. 18, Council Member Michelle Volk said she was hopeful the stipulations baked into the document will force Havenpark to clean up the community. And she urged residents to hold the company accountable.

“You folks really need to really keep the pressure on them to make sure they’re servicing you,” she said. “You are their customers. You’re paying the rent.”