By B.C. Manion
Every year, about this time, the population of Zephyrhills begins to swell.
At first, it is barely noticeable. There are few more cars on the road and some recreational vehicles begin to show up bearing Michigan or Minnesota tags.
They may arrive in a trickle, but by the end of the year thousands of seasonal residents will have settled into the city’s plentiful mobile home and RV parks.
“The population rises to anywhere between 85,000 and 90,000 in the greater Zephyrhills area up from around 50,000. It almost doubles,’’ said Vonnie Mikkelsen, executive director of the Zephyrhills Chamber of Commerce.
“I look at our community calendar in October and November and it is packed with activities. People are coming back. The traffic picks up. Businesses start ringing in more dollars, and then events just start happening all over,” she said.
Jen Tuttle, manager at the Golden Corral at 6855 Gall Blvd., is familiar with the annual influx.
“We look forward to it. We certainly appreciate our local regulars, but definitely the winter residents help support the business. I would say our volume doubles.”
In a normal week, the restaurant’s salad bar goes through about seven cases of lettuce.
“I would say we go through another seven or eight cases a week when we’re in full swing with the Northerners,” Tuttle said.
Besides picking up business, the restaurant hires additional help.
“As a matter of fact, I have a couple of employees who are seasonal employees – who come down here for the winter,” Tuttle said. “The most well-known is Rosemary. Everybody calls her Rosebud. Everyone loves her.”
Steve Lopez, general manager at Pin Chasers, at 6816 Gall Blvd., said the winter residents make a huge difference for the bowling alley too.
“Our daytime business, as you can see right now, is slow. In another month-and-a-half we’ll be full during the daytime, Monday through Friday, with senior park groups,” Lopez said. He estimates as many as 750 people join the daytime leagues during the winter.
“We obviously enjoy having them here. We have some events that cater to them, and we cater to their individual communities,” Lopez said.
The bowling alley’s café also gears up for bigger crowds.
“My burger sales go way up,” said Bill Harrigan, café manager. He also sells lots of hot dogs – nearly twice as many as he sells at other times of the year.
Christine Winters, of Winters Mobile Home Park, has been watching the annual migration of seasonal residents for more than 40 years.
Her father-in-law bought the mobile home park in 1952, and before that it was Eastman’s Trailer Park.
The park, at 38022 Winter Drive, has 270 rental spaces. Its seasonal residents come from Quebec, Nova Scotia and Alberta, Canada, as well as Minnesota, Michigan and other northern states.
They typically begin showing up around the middle to the end of October and stick around until about the beginning of April, she said.
Once they arrive, they get busy with card games, coffee hours, exercise classes and dances at the mobile home park’s recreation hall and in games on its shuffleboard court, Winters said.
Their presence is also noticeable around the city, she said.
“You can tell a difference in the winter time,” Winters said, particularly at the local churches and restaurants. “Most of the churches here put on an extra service.”
Dawn Smith, an assistant manager at the Twistee Treat at 36305 SR 54, loves seeing the flock of winter residents arrive. “We stay busy pretty much all day in the winter time,” she said. The ice cream stand starts getting busier in December and gets busier each month through March.
She sees many familiar faces.
“It’s our same winter people that usually come back every year,” Smith said.
Some of the people who start out as winter residents decide to become full-time residents of Zephryhills, said Bryan Toll, who is one of them.
Toll is the activities director at Betmar, 37145 Lakewood Drive, the city’s largest mobile home park.
For years he and his wife, Donna Sue, made the annual trek south from their home in Indiana. In 2006, they decided to settle in Florida full-time.
Now, Toll keeps busy at the mobile home park, which has more than 30 clubs including everything from bridge club to bingo, shuffleboard to Bible study, computer club to cribbage.
He estimates that roughly one-quarter to one-third of Betmar’s residents live there year-round, with the rest coming for the winter. They begin arriving in October and generally stay until spring. Some come down, return to their other home for the holidays and then return.
People living there come primarily from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, New York and Michigan, but also come from Canada, Indiana, Illinois and many other states.
Every time somebody new moves into the park, Toll said they ask: “Why are you here?” More times than not, it’s because someone in their family, or a friend, recommended it.
Despite the tough economy, the Golden Corral’s Tuttle said she did not notice a big drop off in winter residents last year, and said it’s too early to tell if it will this year.
But the winter residents are starting to arrive.
“We’ve actually already welcomed back a handful of our regulars,” Tuttle said.
Most will stay until sometime around Easter, several sources said.
Typically, it’s the weather, not the date, that charts the time of their departure, Tuttle said.
“Honestly, the weather up North determines when they leave. If it is still real cold, they typically tend to hang out here,” she said.
