This is why you never buy a house on land you don't own
read here this is the latest article, the other one was a year old. This would apply to RV sites as well and fairly common in Florida.
Forum Discussion
wapiticountry wrote:
I would be shocked if the City wasn't required by law to maximize the proceeds in any sale. Usually this is accomplished by requiring sealed bids in any sale of publicly owned property. It is possible that the parks have the right of first refusal in such a sale, but I really can't see any way they could just negotiate a sales price without competitive bidding. A negotiated sale without bidding would be ripe for all sorts of fraud and malfeasance. Selling the land for $30 Million when it is worth $50 million would be ripping off the taxpayers, but might be very attractive to the City staffer whose uncle owned one of the parks or if there was a million dollars of unmarked bills suddenly left on the seat of his car. Obviously we don't have all the information, so it will be very interesting to see how it plays out.
You do need to keep in mind that those campgrounds AND leases goes way back to the times when that land was worth pennies and practically given away.
City of MB has most likely made more than their "fair share" back on the land in lease money along with all of the TAX revenue that has been generated by the operation of said campgrounds (which is considerable). Plus, only the City of MB and the campgrounds involved know exactly what the lease terms are.. Good chance that there would be some sort of end of lease purchase terms, most like some sort of right to first refusal because of the campgrounds providing infrastructure and maintenance.
Not to mention all of this time City of MB has not had to touch or manage this land so no costs to the City of MB all of the time during the lease.. They sell it to the highest bidder and it isn't the campgrounds it may look like a money grab to the good citizens of the City of MB..
Not to mention, it IS a pretty busy resort area and losing camping spaces would have a pretty big ripple effect on not only those two campgrounds but every campground within the Grand Strand area (60 miles of shore line).
I am sure the City of MB and the campgrounds would want to avoid making a mess of it for the sake of City of MB making the most of the land prices..
