Old trailer park is being reborn on Summer Ave.
Harold Crye plans major redo for trailer park on Summer
Construction workers packed soil atop another newly installed sewer line in Summer Manor Community on Tuesday morning, as yet another crime in the tough neighborhood drew a cluster of five police cars directly across Summer Avenue.
“It’s in a crazy place,’’ Magaly Ramirez said of the neighborhood. The 21-year-old lives in the former Leahy’s mobile home park with her husband and two young children.
But Summer Manor itself is “really calm; we haven’t had problems,’’ she said. “I think the construction, it will be worth it at the end of the day.’’
Hers is one of 20 families living in the 100-pad community whose worsening condition in summer 2014 drew notoriety and eventually a purchase offer from Harold Crye.
“I think we will be an island in the storm,’’ Crye said of the 12-acre property at 3070 Summer he’s renovating.
“When we put a security fence around it, it will be safe, secure housing which they never really had before. There have been bad guys running in and out of that place for years,’’ he said.
Crye is far better known for permanent houses than mobile homes. He is co-founder with Memphian Dick Leike of Tennessee’s largest realty company, Crye-Leike Realtors.
The Nashville resident may add a humanitarian element to his business reputation if he pulls off this latest venture: Transforming a mobile home park that had been run and maintained so poorly that the residents’ suffering made headlines last summer.
The management of Leahy’s mobile home park, as it was known for decades, had fallen behind $51,000 on the utility bill. The 65 families there then were told to leave before Memphis Light, Gas and Water Divi-
sion cut off utilities.
Despite the property’s poor condition, Crye jumped at the chance to purchase Leahy’s for $290,000 after partner Dick Leike told him it was for sale.
He figures his investment will grow to about $1.2 million after all the new sewer and water lines are installed, the interior roads are resurfaced, the new mobile homes are purchased, the new office and clubhouse are built, the eight rental cottages are renovated, the playground is built, the wrought iron fence with access-code gate is erected along Summer and extensive landscaping is planted.
He has already created a dog park to give residents a place to walk their pets.
The few families in Summer Manor persevere even though the place is a construction zone complete with dust and loud machinery.
“I thought it was somewhere you could save up money; that’s why we got it,’’ said Ramirez, who plans to enroll in law school. “I just want to save money and buy a house, (but) from what I see, they are fixing it really good and I might end up keeping it.’’
Mobile home parks may not be glamorous, but they can be good investments. Crye and a partner once bought a foreclosed mobile home park in Florida for $1.2 million and sold it 18 months later for $2.1 million. “That was a good deal,’’ he said.
Demand is strong for inexpensive housing, and local governments effectively bar additional mobile home parks, he said.
Summer Manor offers a bonus: It’s near the heart of Memphis, close to the Memphis Zoo, Overton Park and Sam Cooper Boulevard, and a few blocks from a planned grocery in the Binghamton neighborhood.
Even sinking $1.2 million into Summer Manor, Crye believes he’ll do fine. Similar properties sell for $25,000 to $30,000 per mobile home pad, he said. By that measure, the 100-pad Summer Manor could bring up to $3 million.
The renovation work should take another three or four months, but the park likely won’t fill with new residents and mobile homes for another year and a half, Crye said.
The renovation will include grass that is lushly green and ‘Chem-lawned,’ he said.
“I don’t want my name on something that’s a pile of junk. We’ll make sure it will look really good,’’ he said.
“This is going to be about as good as it gets for Shelby County as far as having some good quality, lowincome housing that’s going to be safe and secure,” Crye said.