I didn’t want January to end without welcoming a new resident-owned community into the fold.

Just before 2010 came to a close, Tropicana Mobile Manor in Fort Myers was bought by an association of homeowners formed to purchase the park and convert it to a resident-owned cooperative, Tropicana Co-op, Inc.

Tropicana has 470 total spaces and the purchase price was $33,810,000.  More than 160 residents bought membership shares in the cooperative to help finance the purchase and Bank of America provided the blanket loan.

The closing occurred on December 17 and the residents were guided through the process by Marty Pozgay and his Florida Community Services Group.

Congratulations to the residents of Tropicana.  Welcome to the ROC family and we’ll look forward to seeing your board members at future seminars and meetings of the Southwest Florida Resident Owned Communities.

As many of you know, between our seminars at Spring Creek Village in Bonita Springs, Venice Isle Estates in Venice, Skyway Village in Palmetto, my recent presentation for the Mid-Florida ROC meeting at Hawthorne in Leesburg, and attending several annual meetings, January has been incredibly busy and I have been asked many very interesting questions by attendees at these events.  I promise to discuss several of those questions on this blog during the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I want to thank all of the communities that hosted our presentations and also want to thank Skyway Village for inviting me to their open house for their beautifully renovated clubhouse and Windward Isles in Sarasota for allowing me to share in the celebration of their 25th anniversary of becoming a resident-owned community.

2011 is shaping up as a banner year for ROCs in Florida and we’re glad that Tropicana has joined us!