News

New Alpine Woods owners promise improvements

Alpine Woods Resort is under new ownership for the second time in three months.

By Bill Moss, Published: September 30, 2015

Seven months ago, sub-zero degree weather froze water lines at Alpine Woods resort and left tenants with no running water for weeks.

A month later, when the landlord had made no progress restoring water service, officials with more than a dozen agencies sat down in a meeting room at the City Operations Center to figure out how to address the crisis.
It’s been a long and bumpy road since then.
Alpine Woods has survived two ownership changes, a lawsuit to have it declared a public nuisance, a series of small claims actions over housing code violations and a report from the sheriff’s office documenting hundreds of emergency calls for domestic violence, vicious dogs and drug use.
The next chapter could be the most promising one for tenants of the 80-unit park on Old Sunset Hill Road off Howard Gap Road east of the Ingles on U.S. 64 East.
“It’s not perfect but we are working together to make it better,” City Manager John Connet said. “Our interest all along was to make it safer and to protect the health and safety of the folks that live there. We know they should be in better shape as it relates to water and sewer. We’ve cleaned up a lot of the issues as it relates to unsafe wiring and dangers to be the people that were living there.”
The new owners, Jerry Conner and his wife and their daughter, Erika, say they’ve got a long list of repairs and improvements they plan to make. They’ve already met with city and county building officials and plan to work closely with the sheriff’s office on policing.
Susan Frady, the city’s code enforcement officer, said Conner had been cooperative in getting information about housing code violations.
“He’s working with us and we’re certainly willing to work with him,” she said.

‘We’ve interacted with everybody’

Erika ConnerA single mother of two children, Erika Conner was discharged from the Army as a sergeant in 2010 after serving three years, specializing in satellite imagery.
“Hopefully we’re going to make this place a little bit safer and nicer for the people to live in,” she said. “We want to work on a lot of the trailers and improve the grounds and make some renovations. It takes some time. It took time to get in this condition. We’ll start to see major improvements at least in the next three to six months and within the year you’ll definitely see them.”
A 2004 graduate of West Henderson High School, Conner said she and her parents have aggressively sought information on the park conditions and the repairs that are needed.
“We have interacted with everybody,” she said. “We have been in conversations with the county and the city since before we even bought the place. We wanted to find out as much as we could about the property before we officially bought it. We’ve done it before.”
Her parents own and operate Willow Mobile Home Park on Howard Gap Road west of Clear Creek Road, a well-kept development with flower beds at the entrance and outside many of the trailers.

Partnering with the sheriff

The Conners plan to partner with law officers, too.
“Next week we’re going to go to the (sheriff’s) command meeting and meet everyone, explain what we’re doing, see what they can do to help with us,” Erika Conner said. “They’ve had a lot of issues out here and we want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
Sheriff Charlie McDonald said he’s convinced the new owners genuinely want to make the troubled park a decent place.
“They truly want to do the right thing,” he said. “The word that’s been given to us is they want to clean it up but they also realize it’s a niche here in this area for folks that can’t live just wherever they want to live.
“They’re wanting to clean the place up, hold folks accountable, not put up with a lot of criminal shenanigans, and have a place that actually affords folks a place that’s respectable and decent and safe and reasonably secure from crime and thuggery.
“I really appreciate the fact that they’re reaching out to us. We want to help make them successful.”
A lawsuit filed jointly by the city of Hendersonville, Henderson County and District Attorney Greg Newman sought to have Alpine Woods declared a public nuisance. Officials envisioned a court order seizing the property and appointing a manager to oversee repairs. That didn’t happen, and it might be just as well, McDonald said.
“In spite of what we thought might have been the best option initially, I think that things have kind of evolved to something that’s even more satisfactory than any of us could hope for — if in fact what they say they want to do is something they’ll push forward to accomplish,” he said. “I have no reason to doubt that they will.”
Conner sounds determined to push it forward, starting with the water line repairs.
“We’ve got to make sure they’re buried correctly, fixed correctly,” she said. “We’re not going to have a repeat of that (frozen water lines and broken pipes). It’s not going to happen.”
After the most urgent repairs are done, the owners plan other improvements.
“We’re going to pave,” she said. “We’d like to eventually have a Laundromat. We’d like to have a playground for kids to play on. We are very focused on having a community. Just because you’re not making a lot of money doesn’t mean that you’re not a good person that’s trying to fix your life and that you don’t deserve a good place to live.”