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Many new developments in trailer size and park amenities have left Farrington's behind. Its venerable age is a disadvantage in adapting to new trends in the mobile home industry. With much of its acreage laid out in narrow, shallow lots suitable for the smaller trailers of an earlier era, there is virtually no room for the new and larger mobile home types.
Farrington's is zoned as a commercial use in the City of Burlington and it is clear that with the low rents which are charged (between $150 and $300 per month47) the land would be more valuable if it were developed for some other commercial purpose. The profitability of the park is also effected by a law which the State of Vermont has enacted to protect mobile home owners. The legislation gives the mobile home owner the right to sell his trailer and with it to transfer the park space which it occupies. This has raised the resale value of mobile homes considerably since park space is so hard to come by. In 1990 James Farrington surmised that some of the larger trailers were worth up to $40,000.48 However, many park owners protested that the law was a taking of their property. They receive no fiscal benefit from the added value of the park space they own and if a mobile home is sold they have no control over who their new tenant might be. The law protects mobile home owner's property values but it is keeping developers away from building new parks, which makes the park shortage more acute. It is a problem which is likely to end up in court.49
Farrington's Trailer Park has been in place for more than 50 years. But the trailers themselves have a more fragile hold on the landscape. A graphic example of this is the lot at #2 Avenue B. When I first visited Farrington's, the trailer at that address was a recreational camper set up on cement blocks. When I returned two weeks later, an entirely new trailer was in its place and there was no sign that the first trailer had ever been there.
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The speed with which a mobile home park may be assembled or disassembled, coupled with the impermanence implied in the mobile home building type creates a new relationship to the environment, one that is both immediate and removed from its surroundings. Farrington's Trailer Park may be there for quite a while, but the parts which make it up may change or disappear and leave hardly a trace.