Before May 26, 2015, Charles Poindexter was living pedal to the metal.
He bought car after car, part after part, and collection item after collection item.
But on May 26, 2015, Poindexter received a complaint from the Alachua County Code Enforcement Board about the excessive clutter and junk on one of his properties.
At the time of the complaint, there were 25 cars, three boats, one crane and an uncountable amount of wood and scrap metal at the lot located on Southwest 59th Avenue in Archer.
Poindexter’s former neighbor, Robert Molloy, filed the complaint because he had his adjacent 5-acre property up for sale for nearly five years and said he believes Poindexter’s clutter was the reason it had not been purchased. Multiple attempts to contact Molloy this past week were unsuccessful.
“I offered to buy the property and they raised the price by $10,000,” Poindexter said. “I slept on it and I said 'OK, I’ll buy it,' and then they decided to raise it $10,000 even more.”
That was a line the 72-year-old said he wasn’t willing to cross.
On Jan. 7, the Alachua County Code Enforcement Board summoned Poindexter to be given a time limit for the property to be completely cleaned up.
“I am guilty of every bit of this,” Poindexter said. “The record shows this as being junk, but I call it a gold mine.”
Mitchell Martin, the board chairman, said Poindexter asked for six months to clean up the property, but the county initially only wanted to give him 30 days.
Jackie Raes, code officer for Alachua County, said the county did not object extending the time limit.
Since the violation, Molloy has moved and attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.
The board cited Poindexter with two violations - one for accumulation of junk and one for unserviceable vehicles - and gave Poindexter a six-month deadline to clean up the property.
If the deadline is not met, he will be charged $50 for each violation per day after June 7, which Raes said is the standard amount per violation.
“It will get done, but I’m not going to just give it away,” Poindexter said. “I love codes. I love what they do. I just have trouble following them and letting go.”
Since the initial complaint from Molloy, Poindexter said he has moved four vehicles and has sold four vehicles.
He plans to move everything to a different property to meet deadline and eventually build a warehouse to store his valuable cars and car parts.
“Code Enforcement would call it junk. Hell, my wife even calls it junk,” Poindexter said. “But everything here is a piece of gold and something that means something to me.”
Poindexter has seven locations and four sheds filled with car parts, more than 100 collectible cars and scattered mementos from racetracks he’s visited throughout his life.
“When I was a kid I had nothing, zero,” Poindexter said. “But my friends had money and when they would wreck them they would give me the parts and I would sell them.”
That’s when it all started, he said.
But since May 26, 2015, it's been slowly coming to an end.
“I know its more than fair and I sympathize with them, but they’ve got to know where I’m coming from,” Poindexter said. “I’ve got a gold mine.”