County Tries To Find Place For Displaced Mobile Homes
Ken Lengel moved to Vista Mobile Home Park eight years ago.
Since then, he has enjoyed long, leisurely walks through the nearby Dishman Hills Natural Area. Two years ago, he built a wood shop behind his 12-by-60-foot mobile home and planted a cherry tree in his front yard.
But Lengel’s little patch of paradise is soon to be lost.
The retired electrician is among the residents of three Valley mobile home parks who will have to move within a year or so to make way for construction of the Valley Couplet.
“I loved this place,” Lengel said. “I wanted to settle down here.”
Spokane County is trying to help Lengel and the rest of the approximately 160 occupants of 65 mobile homes that will be displaced by the couplet. Most own the mobile homes in which they live, but rent space in a park.
Three mobile home parks - Vista, Rose Haven and Woodland - sit in the path of the planned four-lane commuter road, which will follow First and Second avenues from Interstate 90’s Sprague Avenue exit to University Road. Of the 65 homes affected, 30 are in Rose Haven, 24 are in Woodland and 10 are in Vista.
The county has hired Taylor Engineering to study the feasibility of relocating the displaced mobile homes to two nearby pieces of land it owns: A four-acre parcel south of Rose Haven, and a 23-acre parcel that wraps around Park Place Retirement Home from Fourth to Eighth avenues.
If the county decides to move the displaced mobile home residents to its land, it would probably sell the property to a developer or property manager rather than building and running a mobile home park itself, right-of-way agents said.
The county is pursuing the move “because quite a few folks who are elderly on fixed incomes don’t want to leave the area,” said Jim Haines, county engineer.
“We want to keep the trauma as small as possible,” Haines said. “It seemed like one alternative. We’re just investigating.”
Overall, as many as 225 people in 100 houses, mobile homes and apartments will be displaced by the $18.7 million, 2-1/2-mile Valley Couplet.
So far, the county has purchased 12 properties along First Avenue, where four lanes of roadway will carry eastbound traffic, said Bert Haight, county right of way supervisor. The eastbound lanes of the new roadway will follow First Avenue to Park Road then jog south and follow Second Avenue to University.
The relocation study offers no real comfort to Lengel. He likes living where he is because it’s quiet and close to nature. He doesn’t want to move to a place that will have more traffic and more people.
“That’s what I moved (away) from,” he said.
Others say they’re waiting to hear what the county decides.
“Everyone is sitting there in limbo, not knowing what’s going on,” said Dan Jurgens, who manages Rose Haven Mobile Home Park.
The relocation study will be complete in a few weeks, county engineers said.
But no matter what the results, many mobile home residents still will have to clear out to make way for the commuter roadway.
That’s something Lengel isn’t looking forward to. “This is just home, sweet home,” he said.
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