It looks like the owner of a lawfully nonconforming mobile home community in Cedar Hill will get to expand and improve the development following a recent Jefferson County Planning and Zoning Commission decision.
On July 11, the commission decided to recommend that the Jefferson County Council approve a request from Paradise Estates, a St. Louis company, to rezone a 7.6-acre property at 1 Paradise Estates Drive from large lot residential to planned mixed residential, which allows for a higher density of residences per acre.
A mobile home community, which has nine residents, is located on the property at Hwy. B and Cedar Hill Road.
The commission advises the County Council on land-use issues in unincorporated areas. The County Council, which has the sole authority over rezoning, will consider a resolution to approve the rezoning request and development plans at a future meeting.
Owner Robert Brake said the zoning change would allow his company to add 40 more concrete pads on which future tenants may place their mobile homes, adding that he was not aware his property was nonconforming when he purchased it in 2020.
“(The property) has been a mobile home park since before the 1970s,” Brake said. “In 1991, there was a (countywide rezoning effort), and this park didn’t meet the requirements, so (the county) changed (the zoning), and no one ever said anything, and life went on. We’re just trying to change it back to make it a nice, clean park and put a sewer treatment plant in, bring some new pads – homes – in and fill it up and give people a nice place to live.”
The commission voted 4-2 in favor of approving Brake’s request, with commissioners Johnathan Sparks and Jeffrey Spraul voting to deny the petition. Commissioner Tim Dugan was absent from the meeting.
According to Brake’s development plan submitted with his petition, the revamped mobile home park would include a new wastewater treatment plant, street repaving and the addition of a turnaround at the front of the park. He asked for three modifications from the county’s unified development order (UDO): relief from the minimum setback requirements from the road to the mobile home pads, relief from providing stormwater management infrastructure and relief from the stream buffer requirements.
The commission voted to allow the minimum setbacks to be changed from 15 feet to 10 feet from the road to the nearest edge of the mobile home pads. The commission denied the request to waive the stormwater runoff infrastructure and approved the request to adjust the stream buffer. According to the development’s civil engineer, Kirby Scheer, a small portion of the sewer treatment plant’s perimeter fencing would fall within the stream buffer.
Sparks said he voted against Brake’s request because he believes new developments should adhere to the UDO.
“You have this new landowner that comes in and they’re kind of pinched at this point,” he said. “You feel bad for the landowner, but you also have to understand that the UDO is the UDO. You give an inch, and everybody lines up. Yes, it sucks that you bought a piece of property that you didn’t know was (zoned LR2), and it may just be a total hole you throw money into and get nothing out of it, but nothing is stopping you from keeping it LR2.”
Spraul said he was looking to the future of the area when he voted no. By changing the zoning to allow high-density living, he said future developments could change the area’s landscape.
“If we have a high-density mobile home park, it will be there long after all of us are dead and gone,” he said. “It will be there for 50, 60, 70 years. One of the questions I have as far as development is, do we need additional high-density housing here? You know, big-picture stuff. It’s nothing personal to this guy.”
Scheer, who spoke in favor of the petition, said the original landowner and county made an error when zoning the mobile home community as LR2.
“The two ways to look at it is, Mr. Brake should have known better and the other way to look at it is maybe the county should have pointed it out louder,” Scheer said. “The development was pointed out to Mr. Brake that it was a mobile home park. The real estate agents probably didn’t do the full disclosure. (The county) should have known that the mobile home park was there, and they should have made an exception for it in 1991, but things fall through the cracks. This is a big county, and there’s a lot of things to look at.”
Commissioner Mike Huskey said the original mobile home park owner most likely received letters from the county with notifications of a potential zone change, but nothing was done.
“I’ve been on this commission since it started, and back when we did the zoning, letters were sent to property owners, and we had hearings where they come in and requested their zoning,” he said. “I imagine the owner of this trailer court didn’t come and get it zoned properly at that time and that’s why it went to (LR2).”