Residents worry that Beach plan leaves no place for them

VIRGINIA BEACH

In front of a particularly tidy-looking plot at Colony Mobile Home Park is a rolling gate built by Carl Corley. Out back is a hand made gravestone for Carl and Suzanne's beloved cat, Blitzer. Between sits the two-bed, two-bath trailer the couple has lived in for 20 years.

"This is our blue heaven," said Suzanne Corley, 73.

Until Colony Mobile Home Park is turned into something else. The park's owners, the Chaplain family, are flirting with the idea of redeveloping their land and a few nearby parcels into "Ocean Center," a roughly 50-acre campus of restaurants, homes and offices inspired by Town Center.

The idea, just talk for now, is enough to rattle some of the roughly 1,000 residents who say they live at Colony because they can't afford anywhere else. A lot at Colony costs about $450 per month.

"We don't know what the future is going to hold for us," said Irene McCarty, 88, who has lived at the park for about 45 years - longer than anyone else. "I couldn't live anywhere else for this."

McCarty got upset after she found out about preliminary plans for Ocean Center, a mixed-use village that could include a light-rail link to Norfolk and the Oceanfront. Those plans include a 320-room hotel, 800,000 square feet of office space, and about 600 townhouses or apartments. The cost is estimated between $500 million and $1 billion.

The idea has been shopped around by resort landholders Whitt Sessoms and Eddie Chaplain and is included in a draft of the city's resort area master plan.

Chaplain said it's too early to discuss when residents might have to leave. He and Sessoms still need to talk with developers, the Navy, city zoning and planning officials - and get the eventual approval of the City Council.

"We've got a lot of loose ends to tie up before we can say when someone might move," he said. "It might be three, four, five years, 10 years before anything comes together."

William "Jerry" Chaplain, the day-to-day head of the trailer park and Eddie's uncle, said he is committed to keeping the park open "as long as I'm healthy." He allows only owner-occupied trailers on the roughly 260 lots, a rule he says keeps down crime.

Jerry Chaplain added that as a responsible businessman, he has to consider his options for one of the largest contiguous land tracts at the resort. He said he authorized Sessoms and Eddie Chaplain to talk to developers about the trailer park, but all decisions have to come through him.

Jerry Chaplain said the city is pushing redevelopment in the entire resort area, and that forced him to protect his land. He is still bitter over a 2004 plan to condemn the trailer site to build a new middle school. The plan was dropped, but he's concerned whether the city may try again to take his land.

"If the city comes gunning for me, I need to be able to tell them how I can redevelop," Jerry Chaplain said, later adding, "I just want to be left... alone."

Meanwhile, residents who vividly recall the fears of eviction from four years ago can do little but wait.

"I'd never be able to get another place," said Donna Pohl, who pays for her unit with her late husband's pension.

"We don't know where we'd go," added Suzanne Corley. "It's our home."

Natalie Kessel, McCarty's daughter and a former Colony resident now living in Norfolk, questioned what role Virginia Beach will play if the park closes.

"Is the city going to provide housing?" Kessel asked. "People live here for a reason."

Sharon Prescott, housing development administrator for Virginia Beach, urged nervous residents to start looking at housing options before waiting to hear whether the park will close. She said the city offers several housing programs, but they all come with eligibility standards.

"There's no special relocation assistance just because your mobile home park is being purchased," Prescott said. "What we would try to do is provide counseling, if requested."

Kessel fears the issue will garner little attention because too many people judge Colony as a low-end place to live and no one will speak up for the residents.

"There's good people in here," Kessel said. "Until this place sells."

Richard Quinn, (757) 222-5119, richard.quinn@pilotonline.com