Brookvale Terrace Mobile Home Park

Thirty Years Of Ownership by Resident Owners

By Stacey Vreeken

Editor’s note : The largest mobile park landlord in the U.S. is real estate investor Sam Zell. His Equity LifeStyle Properties owns 165,000 units and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange as ELS. His mobile home portfolio is a key part of his $5.2 billion fortune. Out of California’s 4,500 mobile home parks, about 180 are resident-owned communities. Brookvale Terrace Mobile Home Park in Capitola has 111 homes and 150 permanent residents.

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Brookvale Terrace Mobile Home Park in Capitola marked 30 years of resident ownership this April, and more than 50 years as a mobile home park. A potluck with residents April 15 celebrated the small community, its memories and the success of privately owning and managing a mobile home park.

“As residents of Brookvale Terrace, we enjoy our natural surroundings, the community of nice neighbors and having private control of our land and mobile home park. It’s truly an honor to volunteer on the board and serve my community,” says Board of Directors President Sheryl Coulston.

Brookvale Terrace was constructed in the early 1970s by John Minges of Scotts Valley and his partners, according to “The History of Noble Gulch and Brookvale Terrace Mobile Home Park” written by resident Stephanie Kirby.

The Gulch and surrounding land were originally inhabited by the Ohlone native people and given to Maria Martina Castro Lodge in 1833 by the Mexican government as part of the Rancho Soquel land grant, according to Kirby’s history.

Much of the land later was sold to Frederick Hihn (who sailed at age 19 from his native Germany to California and prospered by opening a general store in Santa Cruz when Santa Cruz County has fewer than 700 people) and the Castro-Lodge homestead area on top of Hill Street to Augustus Noble in 1856.

Thus, Peck Gulch, named for a Castro-Lodge heir, became Noble Gulch, writes Kirby.

Due to the extensive rose gardens fed by extensive nearby springs, Noble called his estate Rosedale.

In the development of Brookvale Terrace, Kirby’s write-up shows photos and describes how the path of the Noble Gulch was diverted, trees removed, ground leveled and then replanted to reshape the land into the terrace and brook areas of the mobile home park today.

Noble Gulch cuts through the center and, in an update to a more modern era, is part of a resident-led, native-plant restoration project.

More than 100 plants were propagated by residents and were ready for planting this season, according to Coulston.

“We are two years in to the enhancement project and lots more to go,” she said.

The first mobile home residents arrived in 1972 and all spaces were filled in three years. In the intervening decades, increasing conflict over rent increases in Capitola led to rent stabilization ordinances and lawsuits with park owners.

Abraham Keh, who bought the park in 1981, battled with the residents and the City of Capitola over rents and maintenance, as detailed by Kirby in her well-researched history.

Residents feared higher rents would force them out.

In 1993, residents bought the 20-acre property for $6.8 million with the help of a bond established by the City of Capitola and established the Brookvale Terrace Property Owners Association.

Today the park is overseen by a volunteer Board of Directors and is one of the most desirable mobile home parks in the county.

Coulston said there are no homes for sale in the park right now that she knows of.

“Our last one sold for $870,000 a few weeks ago and hardly makes for affordable housing,” she said. “It is a highly desirable location. There aren’t that many resident owned parks in the community.”

Visit www.brookvaleterrace.com for more information.

“Cisco Kid” from page 7

Just when this human river went through another doorway, narrowing its wide swath to enter—the energy became uncontrolled, intensified, ferocious. I was pushed, pulled, bobbed up and stuffed down into this churning river; then one quick moment later, a sudden wave heaved me into the air and then back under, tossed and tumbled onto the dirty gray concrete floor, underneath a blur of stampeding feet. I was being trampled, suffocated. I tried to take a breath, but no air came in. I felt the river becoming an ocean as big as any in the world and tried desperately to lift my head above the raging torrent.

My body was helpless, so my mind tried to escape, resort so some form of fantasy—think about my fairy cowgirls, rolling dice with Dad, the soothing saltiness of Pastina—anything to help me

“go away for a while,” my typical escape of refusal, my denial of reality. But no amount of mental fantasy would work. I was trapped, asphyxiated.

And I blacked out for what seemed like an eternity, drowning in a dark sea of amnesia.

But a miracle happened. Someone grabbed hold of my arm, lifting me out of the current. Now — along with this teenage girl who tugged me out of the nightmare—I floated on top of the wave of children. Suddenly, it felt like a waterfall had burst over a cliff and emptied the turbulent river into a warm, placid pool of calm.

I don’t remember what happened next. I can’t recall if I found Laura, or she found me. I didn’t care if I never got a glimpse of Cisco and Pancho before they rode off. I didn’t care if Laura had seen them without me. I was just glad to be alive. n