Project Threatens Trailer Court
Wednesday August 2, 2006
Story Mill development eyes Bridger View property
By BROOK GRIFFIN Chronicle Staff Writer
Renee Cates is scared. Scared that her mobile home at the Bridger View Trailer Court on the north side of town is on the endangered housing list.
“We don’t want to go somewhere else,” Cates said recently about the possibility of leaving her home.“I don’t want to leave.” Cates, along with about 90 other residents, are worried that the land their trailers sit on will be sold from under them to developers. Her worries are justified.
Joe Wilson, manager of the trailer park — which has been there since the late 1970s — said Monday there is a potential buyer for the property. “The tentative closing is in October,” Wilson said. If that happens, Cates, along with her neighbors, might have to find a new place to live within two years. “Chances are pretty good that the trailer park will have to go,” Chaucer Silverson, a representative with Gobuild Inc., the firm developing the Story Mill Project, said Monday.
The trailer court is divided into three sections, each one with its own entrance. The roads are paved, the yards are kept up by residents and children run from house to house like any other neighborhood in town.
But the Story Mill Project is set to take up 90 acres of land on the north side of town, including the the trailer court.
A statement from Gobuild Inc. says that meetings are being held to “start building a new neighborhood” in the area around Story Mill and that “change is always difficult.”
One meeting, specifically about the trailer court, was held some weeks ago, a meeting which had some trailer park residents yelling at developers.
“I don’t think it was fun for anyone,” Silverson said. Another meeting happened Tuesday night which was, Chaucer said, even more rowdy than the first.
More than 100 people showed up, most from Bridger View.
Project planners tried to explain the scope of the redevelopment, but were interrupted frequently by people wanting to know what would happen to them if the land sold.
One audience member loudly accused developers of “raping them” by selling the land and getting rid of the trailer park.
Another meeting, focusing on the trailer park, is in the works, but Silverson said each resident will be talked to separately as the development takes shape.
The property will probably be residential, Silverson said, and there will be some low-cost housing included.
“We would like those people (at Bridger View) to be first in line,” he said for affordable housing. However, Silverson said he did not know if there would be enough affordable housing in the area for all the residents of the trailer court if they wanted to still live in the area.
Also, any affordable housing will be far above the $335 a month rent residents pay for the land their trailers sit on.
Jean Robbins has lived in the trailer court for 22 years and will have to leave Bozeman if the trailer park is razed.
“This is the only place I can afford,” she said.
An architect on the redevelopment said Tuesday night homes may range from $150,000 to $1.5 million in the new development. A figure that received groans from trailer park residents.
Residents understand that not owning the land they live on doesn’t give them much say in what happens to it, but the redevelopment could send many people out of town for good.
“We have rights,” Cates said. “You can’t just throw us out with nothing, what about our lives?”
Brook Griffin is at bgriffin@dailychronicle.com
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