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This two-lane bridge in Arnold connects to a one-lane road on Ozark Drive, near the Ozark Hills mobile home park. In 2012, the owner of the park sued when the city tried to get him to pay the majority of costs of the bridge.
ARNOLD — There’s a two-lane bridge that connects to a one-lane road in this Jefferson County community, and it tells an interesting story about government dysfunction.
The bridge sits between a mobile home park and a dog park. It cost taxpayers more than $500,000.
Rob Rosenfeld took me there to make a point. Rosenfeld is a real estate investor whose office is in Clayton. He owns the Ozark Hills mobile home park next to that bridge on Ozark Drive. He owns mobile home parks elsewhere in Missouri, and also in Florida and Colorado.
It’s been a good investment for him. The rent payments are stable; the land values mostly go up. The people who live in his mobile home parks, some of whom own their homes, tend to stay a long time.
Only in Arnold, he says, is the government actively trying to run him out of business. That’s why he called me. Last month, I wrote about the owners of a different mobile home park in Arnold — Jeffco Estates — who have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the city is trying to shut down mobile home parks through ordinances and zoning and, in effect, illegally take their property.
City Administrator Bryan Richison denies the allegation. “I don’t think it’s accurate to say we want to get rid of them,” he told me.
That quote is what caused Rosenfeld to call me.
“They very definitely want to drive mobile home parks out of business,” Rosenfeld says. “It’s very clear. Everyone who owns a mobile home park in Arnold has experienced this. They are just blatantly dishonest.”
To help make his point, Rosenfeld showed me the bridge. Formerly a one-lane bridge on a one-lane private road, it was damaged in 2004. The city wanted to replace it with a two-lane bridge and take over ownership. The biggest landowners on the road, several members of the Winkler family, owned property adjacent to the mobile home park. They had plans for a subdivided residential development that would require a two-lane road.
In fact, around the same time the city was telling Rosenfeld the bridge would need to be replaced, the Winklers submitted plans for a Neighborhood Improvement District to pay for the new bridge. There was one problem: Rosenfeld was assigned to pay about 80% of the cost.
A battle ensued. The city council passed the improvement district, assigning most of the cost to Rosenfeld for a bridge he didn’t want. The bridge was built, and Rosenfeld sued. A big issue? According to his lawsuit, the city’s attorney, Robert Sweeney, was also the attorney for the Winklers, a fact that hadn’t been disclosed to the council when it approved plans for the bridge.
The city billed Rosenfeld more than $266,000 for his portion of the bridge. It also threatened to use eminent domain to take five of the 31 lots in the mobile home park, calling them an “indispensable and integral part of the city.”
In 2012, the city of Arnold and Rosenfeld settled the lawsuit. I obtained it in a Sunshine Law request. Rosenfeld agreed to pay $135,000 toward the bridge, but the city turned around and paid him $160,000 for the five “indispensable” lots.
After insurance company proceeds, Rosenfeld netted about $60,000, according to the settlement. The city got its bridge to nowhere, now mostly funded by taxpayers.
Today, those five lots sit vacant, adjacent to the bridge, with the concrete pads cracking. The city built a dog park next to them. On the other side of the bridge, Ozark Drive is still a private one-lane road, leading to the remaining 26 properties in Ozark Hills and three homes built by members of the Winkler family.
Rosenfeld, like the owners of Jeffco Estates, thinks the affair is symptomatic of the city’s war on mobile homes, seeking to get rid of low-income properties at a time when they are in dire need.
“I don’t know of any jurisdiction in the country that is like Arnold,” Rosenfeld says.
A couple of years ago, the city shut down the sewer line that goes to Ozark Hills and condemned the property — until Rosenfeld got the help of the Department of Natural Resources and threatened another lawsuit. At one point, he even entertained an offer from the city to buy the entire property.
But the city’s own appraisal deflated the value because zoning laws related to mobile home parks make it nearly impossible to improve them or move in new tenants.
Rosenfeld is rooting for the Jeffco Estates lawsuit, hoping it exposes a city’s attempt to drive mobile homes out of business.
“I deal with a lot of governments and regulations,” Rosenfeld says, “and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch metro columnist Tony Messenger discusses what he likes to write about.
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This two-lane bridge in Arnold connects to a one-lane road on Ozark Drive, near the Ozark Hills mobile home park. In 2012, the owner of the park sued when the city tried to get him to pay the majority of costs of the bridge.
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