BRADENTON BEACH – During the March 19 city commission meeting, Building Official Rob Perry estimated there were only five to seven inhabited mobile homes left in the 86-unit Pines Trailer Park.
Pines Trailer Park Homeowners Association vice-president Rex Geissler disputed Perry’s assertion and emailed The Sun on March 25 saying that number is closer to 20.
A once-bustling community, the park now has a handful of residences that appear to be inhabited – with cars in the carports, bicycles outside and plants still blooming. Yet, the majority of the mobile homes are empty and some are in disrepair. There have been reports of squatters entering the empty mobile homes and the police department and the city have been notified.
The Pines Park Investors LLC ownership group announced the closure of the park in January 2025.
Twenty-nine homeowners were served notices of eviction beginning in March 2025. The evictions followed residents withholding their monthly lot rent payments because of the continued disrepair of the park amenities and park grounds after the 2024 hurricanes. Many of those who were evicted, and numerous other mobile home owners too, surrendered their titles to the park ownership group.
Those who remained benefited from a lawsuit filed on March 28, 2025, by Pines Park HOA in an effort to stop the evictions. The lawsuit was settled on Aug. 8, 2025. The specific settlement terms are confidential, but the agreement allowed some homeowners to remain at the park for an undisclosed additional time period.
The fate of the park, which was built around the 1930’s, remains unknown.
In January, the park owners applied to the city to subdivide the mobile home park property into two separate parcels.
While that application was rejected by the city, Perry said during the March 19 meeting that the park property would at some point be rezoned from M-1 (mobile home zoning) to a different zoning designation. He said the city will decide what that new zoning designation is.
“They (the park owners) want to develop the property, and it won’t be a mobile home park,” Perry said.
As of March 26, the city had not received any additional development applications.
