RV park residents seek eviction delay

SMOKEY POINT – Remaining residents at Smokey Point RV Park are hoping a judge today will allow them to keep their homes where they are, at least temporarily.

Eight residents filed a lawsuit and were granted a temporary restraining order to prevent their forced removal from the property at 28th Drive NE just south of 172nd Street NE, to make way for the planned Lakewood Crossing shopping center.

They hope a judge will grant a preliminary injunction, which would stave off eviction long enough for a trial, said Ishbel Dickens, a lawyer with Columbia Legal Services in Seattle, which represents the residents.

Lakewood Crossing is a planned 476,000-square-foot retail center that will include Costco, Target and Circuit City stores, a Red Robin restaurant, and other businesses. Some of the stores plan to open in August.

“I’m close to a nervous breakdown,” park resident Pat Voigt said. “I can’t get my trailer ready to move (fast enough), and I don’t know where I’m going to get the money.”

She must come up with $550 by Saturday to have the trailer towed, and it will cost another $1,500 to have power, water and sewer hooked up once she moves to property near Arlington, she said.

Kirkland-based Powell Development, which is building the Lakewood Crossing project, said construction on the Target store could begin next week. The site for that building, south of the RV park, already has been prepared.

Powell officials wouldn’t comment on the situation with the RV park, referring those questions to the owners of the property. Efforts Thursday to reach an attorney for the property owners were unsuccessful.

No one could say whether an injunction would stall the Lakewood Crossing project.

The residents were given notice Dec. 1 that they had 45 days to move. Many residents already have left, but up to 25 families remain.

“We had to do something,” said Voigt, 52, who has lived there about five years. “There’s a guy there with no legs, people that have had surgeries. There’s old people, disabled people. They need more time.”

Many have no one to help them pack and move, and most of the trailers and RVs that remain are too old to be accepted at other parks, residents said.

Shawn Randles, 25, said if he has to move now he’ll be able to take only what he can carry. He had back surgery two years ago and is unemployed. His fiance and his daughter took the couple’s only working vehicle to Tacoma to stay with relatives for now, he said.

“I lived here as a kid,” he said.

He moved back about four months ago and lives in a trailer about 15 feet long. It’s so old that no other park will accept it, and he has no way to move it and no money, he said.

“I have nowhere to store my stuff, so I’d have to take what I could carry on my back and walk away and let them bulldoze my home,” he said. “If the park closes, I’m on the streets.”

Dickens said residents are asking the park’s owners to follow the law. Because the park includes some “park model” trailers along with RVs, it falls under the state law that governs mobile home parks, and that requires owners to give residents a year’s notice to move, she said.

“We have a strong case, and there needs to be some due process,” Dickens said.

Site manager Fred Cedarquist also is named in the lawsuit, although he has to leave, too. For 31/2 weeks, he has rented a house in Marysville, but still has a mobile home at the park.

“All I’m doing is what the lawyers tell me to do,” he said.

Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.

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