The owners of two southern Maine mobile home parks have rejected an offer by residents who made a last-ditch effort to form a cooperative to buy the properties.
Instead, Seagate Limited Partnership has told the residents that it plans to move ahead with selling Atlantic Village and Old Orchard Village to an out-of-state buyer — a decision that Old Orchard Beach residents feared would result in steep rent hikes or in the properties being repurposed into short-term vacation rentals.
“After considering our options over the last few days, we have decided to pursue a private sale with the other buyer,” Peter Pope and Sheldon Pope, two officials with the partnership, wrote Thursday in a letter to residents. “This was a difficult decision for us.”
Sandy Ossolinksi, a resident of Old Orchard Village who helped lead the residents’ cooperative bid, said she was not happy with the Popes’ decision but that she understood it. She said the 360 or so residents who live in the two parks found out about the sale after it essentially already had been arranged with the unidentified buyer.
“I wish we had more recourse,” Ossolinksi said. “We could have jumped on the bandwagon a lot sooner had we known earlier the mobile home parks were for sale.”
She and other residents of the mobile home parks held a Zoom meeting late Friday afternoon to discuss the situation. They expect to exchange more information with the Popes, she said, but don’t have other options to pursue.
The Popes said in their letter that they had three main concerns about the residents’ proposal.
The first was that only roughly 50 percent of the parks’ residents signed a petition in favor of pursuing the cooperative plan, well below the 70 percent needed for the residents’ bid to get financing.
Second, the Popes said they are skeptical the residents could raise the $41 million needed to buy the properties.
Lastly, the Popes said they were not confident that they would be able to close on the sale if the residents wanted a 80-day period in which the residents could get their earnest money deposits back if they couldn’t line up the financing.
“Given these uncertainties, we feel as if accepting these terms presents too big a risk that we would be back at square one if the cooperative is not able to obtain the required financing,” the Popes wrote in the letter.
The Popes said that the buyer they intend to sell to is “a family business with 30+ years of experience operating communities just like ours.” The buyer told the Popes that it would not redevelop the properties and that a planned rent increase on June 1, 2024, would be the only rent increase for the next 12 months, the Popes wrote in the letter.
Ossolinki said residents have been told their rents will increase by $75 a month after May. She said she is not sure when the sale will become final.
Ossolinski added that she feels the Popes have been good owners over the years, though maybe not all the residents would agree. She said she and other residents had been concerned that “a big corporation” would buy the parks.
“I am relieved that it’s a family business,” she said of the buyer.
If nothing else, the residents’ experience at the mobile home parks in Old Orchard Beach might be useful to residents of another other mobile home park in Maine that might be put up for sale, she said.
“I’m hopeful we can help the next group,” Ossolinksi said.