Lord Calvert residents told they won't be evicted

Lord Calvert Park residents may finally be able to get a good night’s sleep after learning the developers of the Great Mills-based trailer park will not be evicting any of its residents.

There was concern back in February that Cherry Cove Inc. might evict residents in order to begin work on new development within the community.

“What the deal is is that they want to keep it as a trailer park for now because it’s too expensive to do what they intended to do,” Commissioner Mike Hewitt (R) said in a telephone interview with Southern Maryland News. “What that means is they won’t be giving people notice that they have to move, and so that’s a good thing.”

Mobile homes in the park are owned by the residents, who pay a lot fee for water, sewage and trash pickup, according to previous reports.

“It’s good news for them,” Cherry Cove CEO Brian Norris said to Southern Maryland News. “And the lack of affordable housing in St. Mary’s has to be addressed, but we look forward to the next phase of what the mobile home park can be.”

Norris added that meetings on Cherry Cove’s specific plans will be held in August at multiple locations.

But Hewitt added that there are some issues that still need to be resolved at Lord Calvert.

“What they do want is to find a way to do business differently there and by that [Norris is] looking for the county’s help trying to find out about all the un-permitted additions that have been put on,” Hewitt said, referring to decks and additions to living spaces. “They don’t ask permission, they just go and do it, so that whole philosophy has to change, the whole idea that you can go throw something up on a weekend with some of your friends.”

In mid-February the park had 206 occupied homes. The trailer park is able to accommodate up to 313.

“The goal is to bring everybody into compliance,” Hewitt said. “It’s going to take some help from the county and what we need to do is identify which ones need to be looked at. Let’s make this so that we can get everybody together in a united front with the people who live there and the county with their permitting process and get some resolution to all this.”

Hewitt also touched on the fact that the place still needs to be cleaned up.

“There’s a lot of trash in there and they want to figure out a way to get people to clean it up,” said Hewitt, who added that about 10 dumpsters were placed in the community during Christmas in April and that was “not nearly enough to get rid of what’s in there.”

On Feb. 6, residents filled the government center in Leonardtown during a public forum after hearing rumors they may be displaced. Twelve days later, Hewitt spoke to residents for 45 minutes at a local church trying to ease their fears.

While Hewitt noted there are still matters that need to be resolved, he said that “at least they know they’re not going to get a notice saying they have to move.”