Shady Acres mobile home park is getting upgrades

Sito Negron

Friday, July 2, 2004 | 11:10 a.m.

An 18-wheeler pulled out of Shady Acres mobile home park Wednesday, tugging a faded green mobile home missing chunks of siding.

It was part of the effort to fix the run-down park at 1001 N. Main Street. Shady Acres has been caught up in the aftermath of the April 30 closing of its neighbor, the now-infamous Sky-Vue mobile home park at 15 W. Owens Ave.

Shady Acres residents Jim Stalcup, 79, and Billie High, 71, said Wednesday that after health and safety inspectors from the city of Las Vegas and the Clark County Health District closed Sky-Vue, they started buzzing around, and the Shady Acres owners sold the park in May for $2.5 million, according to county records.

High said there "was no maintenance" done at the park until the new owners took over.

When the new owner, Antonio Sustaita, took over Shady Acres, he also took on the responsibility for fixing a mobile home park with sewer, water and electrical code violations.

Shady Acres was one of more than 40 parks in the city and county identified by health and safety inspectors as being in need of review. At Sky-Vue, multiple agencies had failed to recognize how dilapidated the park had become. Sky-Vue became the prime example of how gaps in the inspection system, and lack of maintenance by owners, had left aging trailer parks in the valley without needed reviews and repairs for years.

"They've just not been inspected for years," said Jim Shadrick, an inspector with the city of Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department.

He said that the city identified 21 parks as needing inspection, and he's gone to about 10.

In the county, "we're looking at the ones that are pre-1976," said Ron Lynn, a Clark County building official. He said that in 1976, federal law regarding construction standards for mobile home communities changed, splitting trailers, mobile homes, and recreational vehicles into different categories.

"In order not to displace people, those 1976 and earlier parks were allowed to exist under the conditions of their original approval, which includes smaller lots and shorter setbacks," Lynn said. However, he said, that does not mean that the pre-1976 parks are exempt from basic health and safety codes.

He said that inspectors from different agencies will meet July 14 to review the progress made over the past months.

At Shady Acres, where the owners, Steven and Denise Karp sold after the city starting cracking down, the new owner's sister said her brother didn't realize how many problems the park had. The Karps previously were owners of Sky-Vue, before selling it two years ago.

"We didn't know they (the city) were almost ready to close it (Shady Acres) down," said Belinda York, sister of the new owner, Sustaita. "We thought it was bad, but not that they were ready to close down."

York said her brother was fixing the problems, an assertion backed up by Stalcup.

"They put in new copper tubing (for water) about two or three days after they bought it (the park)," he said.

Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Director Orlando Sanchez said that even though the new owners inherited a mess, they now are responsible for cleaning it up.

While the previous owners may have failed to fulfill their initial responsibility, he said, "if they leave and you get a new responsible owner, that's better for the city. We don't care who makes the repairs."