Agenda - Planning Commission - 08/06/2015

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Zoning Bulletin June 25, 2015 1 Volume 9 ( Issue 12 mobile -home park as a whole, or the individual lots in a mobile -home park, are the nonconforming use resulting from a park's location in a zone that prohibits residential use. The Background/Facts: Since the 1950s, Cleveland Mobile Home Com- munity ("CMHC") had been operating in the city of Richland (the "City") in Rankin County (the "County"). CMHC was a mobile -home park that included spaces for 138 mobile homes and seventeen campers or recreational vehicles, which were rented to tenants. In 1975, the City zoned the land on which CMHC operated as "I-1, Light Industrial Zoning." In that zone, residential uses were prohibited. Accordingly, as of 1975, CMHC became a nonconform- ing use. Regarding nonconfoiniing uses, the City ordinances provided that noncon- forming lots, uses, or structures were allowed "to continue until they are removed" but the "survival" of the nonconformity is not encouraged. Further, City ordinances provided that nonconformities "shall not be enlarged upon, expanded[,] or extended, [nor] be used as grounds for adding other [s]tructures or uses prohibited elsewhere in the same district." For years, while CMHC was a nonconforming use, mobile homes were removed from the property and replaced. Cleveland MHC, LLC (the "Park Owner") purchased the mobile -home park in 2008. In April 2011, apparently due to deterioration of the property, the City informed the Park Owner that it would begin enforcing the zoning ordinance and, when an existing mobile home was removed, it could not be replaced. The Park Owner appealed to the City's Board of Aldermen (the "Board"). The Board upheld the City's decision and voted unanimously to adopt the fol- lowing resolution: "That in the event a mobile home or similar vehicle is removed from its then present location in the Cleveland Mobile Home Park, another mobile home or similar vehicle shall not be placed on the vacated site." The Park Owner filed an appeal in the County circuit court; the circuit court held that the Board's action was not in error. The Park Owner again appealed. The Court of Appeals held that the City's interpretation of the ordinance was arbitrary and capricious and that it deprived the Park Owner of its "constitutional right to enjoy [its] property." More particularly, the Court of Appeals held that the City's nonconforming use ordinance applied to the "mobile -home park as a whole," not to individual lots within the park. Thus, held the Court of Appeals, as long as the Park Owner operated as a mobile -home park and did not expand, its operation was a permitted use. The City appealed. DECISION: Judgment of Court of Appeals affirmed. As a matter of first impression (i.e., the first time the court ruled on the is- sue), the Supreme Court of Mississippi held that the mobile -home park as a whole, rather than individual lots within the park, were the nonconforming use resulting from the park's location in a zone that prohibited residential uses. In so holding, the court explained that since the individual lots in the mobile -home park were rented to tenants and not owned individually, the © 2015 Thomson Reuters 3