Sandpiper residents partied like it’s 2003.
The Bradenton Beach mobile home park residents marked their 20th anniversary as a co-op March 24, with an all-day celebration.
The party began at 10 a.m. March 24 with the premiere of a video perspective and sipping mimosas. The video, created by park resident Kristen McCormack, included interviews with current and former residents who have been part of the Sandpiper community through the decades.
Jolene Makowesky, organizer of the event, pulled together scrapbooks and photo albums for display at the clubhouse and the resort catered a beach-themed barbecue and celebrated with an evening of live music by Brigid’s Cross and dancing.
The invitation-only evening event hosted 248 people.
The celebration marked the 2003 purchase of the Sandpiper land by original shareholders. The resort’s homeowners raised $5 million in 2003 to purchase the land and created a co-op after the original owner, the Vorbeck Corporation, announced it had received an offer from a developer to purchase the park.
Under the Florida Mobile Home Act, which governs the rental or leasing of mobile home lots in the state, homeowners in Sandpiper were given the first right to purchase the park.
A cooperative mobile home park, or co-op, is a nonprofit corporation owned solely by the homeowners for the benefit of the residents, formed as the park land goes to the homeowners. It then transitions from a land-lease company to a nonprofit, with the homeowners becoming shareholders in the corporation.
Sandpiper community manager Tracy Moon gathered many of the park’s long-term shareholders together for a photo and an interview with The Islander March 24.
Shareholder AnnJo Bitley saw an ad for a trailer for sale in 2000 and stopped by the park to see the unit. She and her husband, Al, purchased the unit the next day and have been residents ever since.
“Our in-laws were here in ’86 and came every March break until we actually bought shares in 2003,” shareholder Darlene Stephenson said.
Penny McCuish’s grandparents went to the park in the late 1950s and McCuish’s family has been there ever since. She became a shareholder in 2003.
“We just drove by and we’d been going by to go to the beach for several years,” shareholder Max Althouse said.
Althouse, who lived in Tampa, used to spend weekends on Anna Maria Island with her family. Their usual drive to the beach would take them past the Sandpiper Resort.
“I used to say, ‘I just want a place where I can go to the beach on Saturday, go stay overnight and then home. I’d even take one of those crappy little trailers.’”
Althouse bought one of those trailers in 2003, becoming one of the many shareholders who made the Sandpiper Resort co-op a reality.
Currently, Sandpiper has 120 shareholders and 46 homeowners.
“We’ve been here since 1939,” Moon said. “Historically resident-owned communities typically don’t make it past the first three years.”
Sandpipers’ 20-year celebration occurred as another island mobile community is making its bid to become a co-op.
Homeowners in the Pines Trailer Park, 103 Church Ave., Bradenton Beach, are working through the process to take ownership from Jackson Partnership LLLP of Bradenton, after it proffered the sale Jan. 25.
To purchase the property, homeowners would split the cost among the 87 existing units. Each owner would be responsible for $183,908, if the shares were equal at the offered price of $16 million.
As of March 10, the initial offer from the Pines HOA was rejected by the Jackson Partnership LLLP, according to residents who asked not to be named.
Little is known of the status of the land sale as the mobile home tenants and owners have been asked to keep details of the sale confidential.