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Airstream Ranch Owner Appeals

Tribune photo by Robert Burke

Travelers along I-4 near Dover get a quick view of Bates RV "Airstream Ranch," a display of eight aluminum travel trailers near Frank Bates' RV dealership on McIntosh Road.

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By GEORGE WILKENS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 12, 2008

Updated: 04/12/2008 12:17 am

DOVER - Airstream Ranch is a roadside attraction, art that cannot be encumbered by government regulations, First Amendment lawyer Luke Lirot said Friday, announcing an appeal of a county order to remove the eight aluminum-plated trailers partially planted off Interstate 4.

Lirot represents Frank Bates, owner of the sculpture and adjacent recreational vehicle dealership. "It doesn't have to be the Mona Lisa to be art," Lirot told a partisan crowd at a news conference in the shadow of the line of leaning Airstream trailers south of I-4, just west of McIntosh Road. The whole idea of art is to convey ideas and promote communication, and Airstream Ranch has certainly accomplished that, Lirot said.

Using a microphone to be heard above the roar of passing trucks, Lirot said the Hillsborough County Code Enforcement Board overstepped its bounds March 14 in ordering that the trailers be removed, as artistic expression is protected under the First Amendment.

Unanimously, the board ruled that the tilted trailers installed Jan. 4 constitute four violations, including accumulated junk, trash and debris, and illegal off-site advertising for Bates RV.

Fifteen washing machines in a backyard might not be an expression of art, but trailers emulating the more famous Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, are, Lirot said. The trailers, Lirot added, bear no lettering or anything that could be construed as advertising.

As part of the appeal filed Friday, Lirot asks the court to suspend the $100 daily fine the county would levy against Bates starting Monday.

After his brief address, which drew applause from many of several dozen supporters wearing "Save Airstream Ranch" T-shirts, Lirot told reporters the constitutional battle could become one of the few to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We're here to keep this project for the benefit of people who do enjoy it," he said.

Those who do not enjoy it include some residents of Castlewood Road, which provides access to Bates' gated 6-acre pasture.

"There's traffic down our road every day," said Arnold Campbell, adding that the yard of the house where he has lived for 35 years suddenly has become the unofficial U-turn spot for Airstream Ranch visitors. "It's aggravating to me because I'm seeing my privacy" disappear, he said.

"It's not art to me," Campbell said, but merely "a bunch of trailers stuck in the ground because he didn't have anything better to do with them."

Neighbor Brian Connell expressed frustration that despite the county ruling, the trailers will remain for now, if not longer.

"If the county can't do anything, what are we supposed to do?" he asked, adding that very little has changed since he spoke at the March hearing. "Nothing, other than more aggravation and more fences being torn up at my house," struck by passing vehicles, he said.

Reporter George Wilkens can be reached at (813) 865-4433 or gwilkens@tampatrib.com.

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