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out are free to take with them their own mobile home. However, <br />tenants who move in or out of a mobile home park do not take with <br />them the owner's investment in the in -ground permanent improvements <br />which define each mobile home site or pad, and the general park <br />configuration, spacing, parking and layout. It is the park owner's <br />investment in these permanent improvements which are the "use" of <br />the "premises" protected by the nonconforming use statute and <br />ordinance. <br />We think the leading case as to mobile home park nonconforming <br />uses was handed down in a thoughtful decision by the Minnesota <br />Supreme Court. <br />"It is indeed unfortunate that neither the township <br />planner nor the developer of Eaton Mobile Home Park seems <br />to have anticipated and made allowance for the <br />significant increase in the size of mobile homes which <br />has taken place since the mid-1960s, but the City may not <br />now remedy that lack of vision by inserting into its <br />zoning code definition of `structure' and `nonconforming <br />structure' patently designed to force immediate <br />compliance with an ordinance adopted more than 30 years <br />after the Park came into existence." SLF vs. Apple <br />Valley, 511 N.W.2d 738 at 742 (Minn. 1994). <br />"We have previously observed that a municipality need not <br />allow the expansion or enlargement of pre-existing <br />nonconforming uses and that the `public policy behind <br />that doctrine is to increase the likelihood that such <br />uses will in time be eliminated due to obsolescence, <br />exhaustion, or destruction.' To permit the City of Apple <br />Valley to accelerate the elimination of Eaton's <br />nonconforming use by requiring immediate compliance with <br />Ordinance 515 would be to allow the City to achieve by <br />zoning ordinance that which can be done only by imminent <br />domain." Id. <br />We now turn to an overriding public policy consideration. <br />Should the zoning ordinance be construed to encourage or to <br />13 <br />