If you're like me, you've probably dreamed of building a new mobile home park or RV park, at one time or another. That was, until the thought of dealing with building permits, site inspections, and zoning regulations start entering your mind. Or maybe until you discussed your park idea with local leaders, and they expressed less than positive enthusiasm for your project. After that, the dream may have started to fade.
If you’re one of those folks, my best advice is don’t get discouraged; get educated! In the world of zoning regulations, opinions don’t count. What counts are the written regulations.
It’s not by accident that many cities and counties have adopted strict regulations for building a new park. Many are even doing so while they also cry for investors to bring housing projects to their community. This is often because the members of the governing body have either had a negative life experience, or have a poor preconceived notion, of what a park can and should be.
Knowing your community’s zoning regulations does two things. First, it helps you preliminarily determine your new park's building cost, and second it helps you protect your legal rights.
Within a city or county's written zoning regulations items like lot spacing, setbacks, and street requirements are each outlined. By knowing these regulations and doing a few simple calculations, this information can give you a much better idea of how much land, and materials, will be required for your project. Afterall, there’s no reason to consider that 5-acre parcel just to find out you can’t put enough lots on it to cash flow.
Once you know your plan will work, you empower yourself to change the application process from a situation that you are requesting permission, to a situation that requires the governing body to defend their potential reasons for denying your permit, once you've met all the written requirements.
Zoning In Today’s World
Back in the 1960s, 70s, and even 80s, if you were thinking of building a new mobile home park, zoning didn’t have much of an impact on our project. Yes, there were a few states that had guidelines, and required some engineering, but overall these regulations were very basic. From the aspect of smaller cities and counties, zoning was completely non-existent. That's all changed dramatically over the decades!
Today, from an economic development standpoint, there are a lot of medium and large companies that simply won’t build a project in a city, town, or county that doesn’t have some form of written zoning regulations. This concept can be confusing for a lot of folks that only have a very limited knowledge of what zoning truly is.
To them, the idea of no zoning regulations always sounds much easier than having to follow a set of rules. In the early 2000’s, when I first started flipping foreclosed homes, I thought the same way.
It wasn’t until I became a Colfax County Commissioner, and fully learned the process, did I appreciate the power that zoning regulations can actually provide to a project, and the company, that's building it.
Mobile Home Parks Are Like Chicken Barns
As some of you may already know, I'm in the Midwest. Around here, agricultural issues are always a big topic so indulge me for a moment as I tell you a short story that proves my point.
Back in 2017, the Costco Wholesale Corporation decided it was going to partner with farmers in Eastern Nebraska and Western Iowa. They're a company that prefers to have zoning regulations in the locations they do business.
In the partnership, the farmers would build the barns and grow the Costco owned chickens. Once the chickens were mature, Costco would then sell them as "cooked to go" chickens, in their stores throughout the United States.
Just a few years prior to this, Colfax County decided it was time to update their adopted Zoning Regulations. As an agricultural county, during the initial public hearings many of the local farmers wanted to ensure that the new regulations did not negatively impact their ability to raise their livestock.
Several public hearings were held to ensure the wording of each new regulation fit the public’s various activities related to their business. After the yearlong process, the public generally agreed each regulation fit, and the regulations were adopted by the Colfax County Board.
With these new regulations in place, the first farmer to partner with Costco submitted his application to build eight new chicken barns. His building permit application was fully complete, and his design for the project met every rule in the new Colfax County Zoning Regulations. For the farmer, it was pretty easy since Costco had much more stringent building and site regulations than the county did.
Instantly the farmer’s neighbors started protesting the building project. Some said it would smell too much (even though there was an 18,000 head cattle producer within a half mile). Some claimed it should follow different rules because Costco was involved, despite their own farms being run under corporate names.
It soon become apparent the neighbors simply had a vendetta against the farmer because of a land dispute several decades earlier. You see it wasn’t the chicken barns, or Costco, they wanted to stop. They just didn't want the farmer who was building the project to succeed and expand his business.
During the final public hearing, as the County Board Chairman, I asked each of the people testifying against the project to provide our board with the reasons they thought the project should be denied. One person mentioned they moved to the county to reduce their children’s allergies and the chicken barns, a mile away, jeopardize that. Another testified that “Big Business” was going to ruin Colfax County. None of them could disagree that the farmer’s project followed all the written regulations.
Know and Use Zoning
“Selective Enforcement” is a term not many have heard of unless you truly know how zoning works. It’s also the reason why many companies choose to only do business in locations that have existing zoning regulations. “Selective Enforcement” is a legal term used when a governing body chooses to ignore, or apply the rules differently, based on biases against the project or the company building it.
You see with the chicken barn application, our board’s only responsibility was to answer the question, “Did the project follow the approved Colfax County Zoning Regulations?” As the final decision makers, our job wasn’t to decide if we liked the industry of the building project, the applicant, or the applicant’s neighbors. Like every zoning governing body, our sole responsibility was to enforce the written regulations that the public had generally approved just a few years earlier. The rest was just “emotional noise”.
Because the farmer had followed the rules, we as a board, had no choice but to approve the building permit. This was later affirmed by a Nebraska Court judge after the opposition filed a lawsuit against Colfax County, and the farmer, for approving the project.
During the final ruling, the judge made a point to write that the process had been handled in a “fair and just” way, and that to come to any other determination about the approval of the application, would have been unlawful. The judge went on to say that this was because the applicant had followed all Colfax County Zoning Regulations as they were written, and that those written regulations had been generally accepted by the public's expectations.
Final Thoughts
The moral the story isn't to convince you that zoning is good or bad. Personally, I'm pretty neutral on the subject now days, because I've learned and understand the process.
Instead, by posting this article, I hope to give you a better understanding that zoning regulations aren't something to be feared when you're considering building that new mobile home or RV park. Instead, empower yourself by simply learning the rules and the process. It will not only strengthen your project's business plan, but also your legal rights.
Because zoning regulations impact our industry in so many ways, I believe that every park owner (or future park owner) should get a copy of their local zoning regulations, and study them. After all, your operation is a part of that community, and that gives you a voice in the subject, but only if you are knowledgeable about why certain regulations may be unrealistic. Knowing your zoning regulations can also help you get your tenant's debris cleaned up, but that's for another day.
Feel free to share your share your experiences with zoning by emailing me at gwigington@mhparks.com.
