Timeshare Project Uproots Renters

Timeshare units that may not be built for up to 12 years will cost two city women their homes by the end of the month.

Karen Adkins and Pamela Jenkins, who live on Penniman Road, said they received an eviction notice this week. The letter, from Colonial Penniman LLC, was dated July 31 and required Adkins and Jenkins to vacate the property by Sept. 1.

The women were puzzled because they didn't know what Colonial Penniman LLC was. Adkins said her landlord for the 17 years she's lived in the modest house on Penniman has been Hunter Vermillion.

Vermillion sold the property to Colonial Penniman in anticipation of the timeshare development.

Adkins works at King's Arms Tavern, and has worked for Colonial Williamsburg for 15 years. Jenkins works at Historic Jamestowne.

Adkins said she was surprised because based on their dealings with BlueGreen Corp., the company that will develop the 400-unit timeshare project that will take the land their house is on, they thought they had at least a year.

“This gives us less than a month,” she said.

The timeshare project has a buildout of 12 years.

Adkins and Jenkins were put in touch with BlueGreen executive Virginia Polinski by Kyra Cook, a neighbor on Penniman Road who's had concerns about the timeshare project. Cook said Friday that at a meeting with Jim Bennett, the spokesman for Colonial Penniman and Polinski, she brought up the fact that Adkins had lived in the house that was going to be demolished for the project for 17 years.

“She said she wasn't aware that anyone lived in that house,” Cook said. “But she said they weren't interested in evicting anyone right away because it was better for them to have someone in the house than to have it vacant.”

Cook said she informed Adkins of that and gave Adkins' contact information to Polinski.

Jenkins said she had talked to Polinski and that she said that if BlueGreen was their landlord, “we wouldn't just give you 30 days' notice.

“Then she kind of laughed, so I expected we would get 30 days' notice,” she said.

Adkins said they'd had a further conversation with BlueGreen to ask for an extension because, although they've found a new place to live, they can't move in there until Sept. 15.

“They said they couldn't do that,” Adkins continued. “It's not just that the new house won't be ready until September 15, we need that long to secure our belongings.”

She said she was done talking to them.

“I'm not communicating with them anymore,” Adkins said. “I can't spare the emotional energy. I've got to get ready to leave here.”

Reached for comment Friday, Polinski said corporate policy prohibited her from talking to the press. She referred all inquiries to a corporate spokesman.

Asked about the eviction and the denial of an extension, spokesman Lisa Thornhill said those were all good questions.

“Unfortunately, we can't answer them for you,” she said. “We aren't evicting anybody because we don't own the property yet. We haven't closed

Asked if getting the tenants out was a prerequisite for the closing, Thornhill said she didn't know.

When first contacted Friday, Jim Bennett, spokesman for Colonial Penniman, was unaware of the eviction notice.

Later, he said that he understood that evicting the tenants was “a legal matter that was necessary for the sale of the property.”

“I understand that the tenants have had some conversations with BlueGreen, I'm not sure how productive they were,” he said. “In any event, BlueGreen is not the owner of the property, Colonial Penniman is.”

Asked about the tenants' request for an extension until Sept. 15, Bennett said he couldn't answer for the owner of Colonial Penniman, who he declined to identify.

“It sounds reasonable to me,” he said. “But I can't speak for the owner.”

Bennett said the owner was out of town and that he'd get in touch with him next week.

Cook, who has been critical of the way Colonial Penniman and BlueGreen have operated, said this was another example of their not cooperating with people in the community.

“It's not so much the eviction that bothers me,” Cook said. “It's the way that it was done. Karen and Pam deserve to be treated with more dignity than that.”