Concern for mobile home park has Arden Hills dumping road plan

Residents of an Arden Hills mobile home park got a reprieve of sorts after the City Council scrapped a road construction plan Monday that would have wiped out about 50 of the homes there.

The Arden Manor mobile home park likely will lose some housing in a future plan, because it sits between Hwys. 10 and 96 -- both of which need to be redone to prepare for development of the former Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP) site.

Nonetheless, residents and activists were satisfied after the meeting that the council had acknowledged their concerns.

"I think the council had a chance to see that some of the folks from MnDOT, the county and city staff had not done their homework," said Ned Moore, organizing director for All Parks Alliance for Change, a nonprofit group that advocates for the tenants of mobile home parks.

Moore's group helped turn out more than 100 people who crowded the council chamber, many of them wearing "Vote No" stickers.

Among them was Eva Storm, 74, who lives with her husband in Arden Manor -- having moved there when she was displaced from a Spring Lake Park trailer court.

That was about seven years ago under similar circumstances.

Storm's husband uses a wheelchair to get around after several back surgeries, she said. Moving again would be much tougher for the couple this time, she added.

"We love it here," she said. "We love the park and our neighbors. We appreciate the heck out of them."

The council voted 4-1 to reject the plan, with Mayor Stan Harpstead casting the only vote in favor.

Harpstead said he supported the plan because it achieved the city's goals for making the Hwy. 10-Hwy. 96 interchange safer and took into account the needs of the nearby Scherer Brothers lumberyard, as well as future development and residents. He called the plan a good starting point for future design discussions.

But the majority of the council disagreed, saying approval of the plan would have come at a cost of displacing too many people from Arden Manor and causing noise problems for other neighborhoods.

The council directed city staff members to come back with another draft that would displace fewer people, although a date for a revote was not set.

"I don't think we're ever going to get to a plan that saves every home. That's probably not going to happen," said Council Member David Grant. "... There's 585 acres [in the TCAAP site] and there needs to be a [new road] interchange here. And there will need to be some land taken."

Grant and other council members complained that the staff's plan didn't do enough to minimize the effect on the mobile home park.

Council Member Dave McClung agreed, saying the plan represented no progress from earlier plans and actually looked worse than some other proposals with the respect to the loss of affordable housing.

"We are narrowing [our options] down, and at some point we're going to be there," he said.

"It hurt," she said, to think the city was going to go forward with the plan without taking more time. "It's like you get to thinking you're the low man on the totem pole."