OKEMOS — The 30-day window for Winslow Mobile Home Park’s operators to fix code violations and sell the park has passed, and neither a sale nor the violations have been resolved.
Meridian Township officials have already cited park operators for a lot that has been used as a dumping site, with trash continuing to pile up, said Tim Schmitt, Meridian Township’s community planning and development director.
“We’ve been keeping track of things all along just to stay on top of it,” he said.
Toward the end of July, township officials and mobile home park representatives signed a settlement agreement which stated that all the nuisances and violations outlined in a previous consent judgment were abated.
It also granted the operators a 30-day period during which the township agreed not to enforce new nuisance violations or issue tickets so the owners could work to abate nuisances and start evicting tenants known to cause them, according to the settlement agreement.
The agreement was aimed at allowing potential new owners to start with a clean slate, as past violations made it difficult to secure financing and the park’s sale has failed to close twice, according to a township contempt motion over continuing violations filed in May.
Ali Damsaz, who operates Winslow Mobile Home Park with his nephew Mahrdad Damsaz under the business D. Venture LLC, said he is working on the park, but multiple factors have slowed the process.
It’s been difficult to get consistent workers for park improvements, although he did have people working on drywall Monday morning, he said.
He’s had to pause working on the nuisance sites to work on mobile homes where people are moving in or out and the courts have been backed up, making it difficult to evict people like the person living on the lot that was cited last week for trash, Damsaz said.
But there’s a court hearing scheduled for Thursday and he’s confident he’ll soon be able to evict other problem tenants and fix the remaining issues, he said. He also resurfaced the streets in the main park and fixed potholes, he said.
He said he appreciates the township being active and trying to work with them, but the park should have been fixed 25 to 30 years ago so it didn’t get this bad. The Damsaz family became involved with the park in 2017 and took full ownership last year.
“But I guess it’s never too late any time you want to fix something as long as you try to stop the decaying,” Ali Damsaz said.
He said as soon as he’s done fixing units he will report to Brandon Brewart of Michigan Multifamily LLC, who has discussed interest in buying the park and has until the end of the year to do so.
“So it’s a struggle but I am pretty sure that we are going to succeed and we are going to finish all this and I will be happy, our residents will be happy and definitely the township will be happier than what they are,” Damsaz said.
A call to Brewart was not immediately returned Monday.
Schmitt said township officials will focus on the “egregious” lot that was cited last week, which is very visible and which the township has received multiple complaints about from neighbors and passersby. After that officials will continue to work with the Damsaz’s on the interior units’ condition.
“And issue violations as we see issues,” he said.
Contact Bryce Airgood at 517-267-0448 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @bairgood123.