City Attorney's Report Pines Mobile HomesMr. Bill Craig
Hopkins City Manager
Hopkins City Hall
1010 South First Street
Hopkins, Minnesota 55343
PINES MOBILE HONE COMMUNITY
2012 EXCELSIOR AVENUE
HOPKINS, NN 55343
938 -8826
October 11, 1984
In Re: Matters brought up in the recent public hearing on the Pines
Mobile Home Park
Dear Mr. Craig:
As owners of the Pines Mobile Home Park we wish to clarify some issues
that were brought up at the recent public hearing.
With regard to the agreement we signed with the City of Hopkins to im-
prove the park, we wish to make the following points:
1. We believe there exists a misconception concerning the extent
to which mobile hones presently on lots in the Pines park fail
to meet the distance standards set forth in the park improve-
ment agreement. At the time we signed the agreement we believe
there were only about six mobile homes that failed to meet the
required distance standards. Since that time, we have worked
with the residents involved with the result that today there
are only three homes remaining that fail to meet the distance
standard. We intend to keep working with the owners of these
hones to attempt to bring these homes also within compliance
by July 1, 1985.
2. It is true that we did not have all the off street parking
areas paved and striped by July 1, 1984. At the time we
signed the original agreement with the City we did not
realize that we would be required to put in a new sewer line
that went directly through the parking lot area we planned to
build adjacent to Shady Oak Road. Putting this sewer line in
turned out to be a very involved and costly project. A twenty
foot wide trench had to be dug to install the sewer line and
the soil turned out to be very wet (it had formerly been a
drain field). In addition we found that in the site had
formerly been a dump where large trees (30' - 40' long) had
been deposited. These tree trunks had to be removed to put in
the sewer line. This work was completed in the fall of 1983
and the ground was leveled and graded for the parking lot. In
the spring of 1984 we brought in class 5 gravel and had to level
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and grade the parking lot area further because of the fact
that the ground had settled more. In June we informed one
of the City of Hopkins inspectors that we would be unable to
complete the paving of the parking lot by July 1st. We can -
pleted the paving of the Shady Oak parking lot after we were
confident that the ground settling had ceased. The Pines
park does not have large excess funds with which we can
afford to repave a parking lot twice.
Since paving all of our off street parking areas we have ob-
served that in any given day only about four or five cars are
parking in the Shady Oak parking lot that we completed this
year. Even at night we have observed only four or five cars
parking out of a total of 24 spaces. Presently we are re-
striping the parking areas within the park since the original
striping we did last fall has worn off in many places. We
believe that the parking problem that did exist in the Pines
when we signed the agreement with the City of Hopkins has been
corrected.
With regard to the results of the various inspections made at the park by
City of Hopkins inspectors on September 25 -26 which were read at the public
hearing, we wish to make the following comments:
1. We have been diligently working to correct the problems cited
by the inspectors. We have contacted each tenant having a
problem with his have or lot and a great majority of these have
been corrected. We have issued a notice to all tenants requiring
that lot numbers be placed on all mobile hones so that they would
be plainly visible from the street. We have also protected the
gas meters where automobiles might damage them.
2. On the items mentioned concerning the house and garage we plan
to work with the inspectors to resolve the problems cited.
The third floor of the house is no longer being used as a
sleeping unit. We intend to have the smoke detectors and fire
alarm installed in the house specified by the fire marshall.
3. The problems we have with blockages in our park sewer system are
almost always due to tree roots. This is a common problem to
property owner's in general where there are trees growing near
the sewer lines. We do want to state, however, that it has been
a very rare occurence to have raw sewage caning out from one of
the manholes in the park. We have been very diligent about
getting the sewer blockage fixed whenever it has occurred. In
some cases the problem has been the resident's fault in that a
sewer pipe caning down underneath the mobile hone has become
disconnected or faulty.
1
In summary, we believe there was a need for us to clarify sane of these
points and to express in writing what we have been doing to comply with
the agreement we have with the City of Hopkins. Last year when we had
the public hearing I remember that three main concerns were raised:
1) That the mobile hones were too closely spaced; 2) That there is in-
adequate parking within the park (making it difficult for fire and
emergency vehicles to get into the park) and 3) That the streets within
the park were too narrow for the fire depaslment vehicles. I believe
these three main issues have been largely rectified. We have fully co-
operated with the fire marshall to establish proper fire lanes within the
park and with the present expanded off street parking there is more than
adequate room for the vehicles parking within our park at this time. We
intend to keep improving the park so that public hearings regarding the
Pines will no longer be necessary.
Respectfully yours,
/C, ll 7�i
Richard K. Mathews
RKM:me