Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 17, 1994 TAG: 9410180006
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In a time of government regulation, building permits, surveys, land maps and city planners, Quail Lane managed to slip through the cracks.
All its new residents wanted was for the city of Salem to pave the rest of their road, which becomes gravel halfway up the block. They thought the work would be finished when they moved into their new homes over the past two years.
But then the city started looking into the matter.
Turns out the gravel road isn't a public road at all, even though everyone uses it.
And it turns out the public right of way where the road is supposed to go - a little to the left of where the gravel street runs - has a house built smack in the middle of it.
No one in city hall is sure the paved road is a public street either, although the city attorney says it became one inadvertently because Salem maintains it.
Legal advice notwithstanding, City Councilman Alex Brown still has doubts about whether Quail Lane officially is a city street, although "it doesn't matter. Nobody's going to sue us to get it back."
In the topsy-turvy world of Quail Lane, everything is in question.
Even the location of the new road and the new houses could be challenged. The city goes by locations on a 1990 survey of the block, "but that's based on one survey," City Attorney Steve Yost said.
"You could probably take 10 surveyors up there and get 10 different" opinions, Yost said. "There's no way to know absolutely."
For 99 years, the road existed on paper only. Two years ago, half a road was built there - which was worse than none at all.
"The problem is, and it started way back in 1893 with the B&O Land Company, [the land] was subdivided but it was probably never surveyed," said City Planner Joe Yates.
The company carved the land between High Street Extension and Thompson Memorial Drive into lots, streets and alleys. The long-defunct B&O sold off the lots, but never built the streets and alleys.
Apparently, B&O never bothered to survey the land either, instead guessing at distances and lot sizes. The few houses built on B&O land are scattered around. Some overlap onto other lots, like the three older homes on Quail Lane around which the 2-year-old subdivision was built.
The B&O land is a headache for the city whenever it comes up. But Salem building official Jim Nininger said he's never seen anything like the Quail Lane quagmire.
It's a case of loose regulations a century ago coming back to haunt a locality, topped off by a series of errors, layered with oversights, covered in blunders.
"Paper roads," ones that are laid out on maps in land books but never built, come up once in a while for local governments to deal with, but this case goes far beyond that.
So what's a city to do?
Salem has three options:
Pave the road on the public right-of-way that was platted 101 years ago, which would cost at least $120,000.
Pave the gravel road in its present location and buy a right-of-way from the property owners, which would cost $60,000 to $70,000, plus money to buy the land.
Or, as Mayor Jim Taliaferro pointed out, "we really don't have to do a thing."
How the houses got approval to be built on somebody else's land is anybody's guess.
One sits in the middle of what is supposed to be the road. Two others are built partially on their owners' lots and partially on state property. Nobody knew.
Everyone has disowned the run-down house that lies crumbling in the middle of the public right-of-way. The city condemned it last week, but it's unclear who will tear it down.
The man who recently bought the lots where the house is supposed to be says it's not on his land, so it's not his problem.
The city says the same.
"It's B&O's problem, it's not our problem," Yates said. "But it's probably one we'll end up having to eat."
The thing is, B&O isn't around anymore to blame.
So residents are blaming the city instead. They have little patience for talk of paper roads and private easements when they see their request as simple: Tear down at least one of the old houses and pave the public right-of-way.
"I don't understand why you're making such a mountain out of tearing down one shack," a resident told City Council at a recent meeting.
The road was platted 101 years ago as Fourth Street in B&O's vision of a large, five-road subdivision. But it remained a quiet gravel road through the woods behind Thompson Memorial Drive for decades.
Then came sewer lines and water lines, followed by developers.
Two years ago, contractor Paul Wiley purchased about 10 lots on the old, never-been-built, exists-on-paper-only Fourth Street and dug out the old plat maps. He surveyed the property and graded the street - which he called Quail Lane - exactly where the old maps said the road should be.
That's when another coincidence complicates the matter further.
While laying the water lines, the city tore up the graded roadbed Wiley had built, so workers went back and paved Quail Lane for free to fix the damage.
The truck was out there anyway, so it seemed like a nice gesture. And because the city had overseen the work, it didn't conduct the usual inspection that's done before a road is accepted into the city system.
The road is only 18 feet wide, not up to state requirements. But by paving it, the city attorney says, the city informally accepted it as a public street, inspection or no inspection.
"This is like a once-in-a-million occurrence," Yates said. "It wasn't the normal way of doing things."
When he built the road, Wiley started at High Street and built Quail Lane only halfway through to Thompson Memorial Drive because that's as far as he built his houses. He built around the three smaller houses - which the Wiley homeowners call shacks.
People who bought houses from Wiley - who didn't return phone calls seeking comment for this story - said he implied that the city was going to tear down at least two of the older houses and pave all the way to Thompson Memorial on the gravel road that meanders through the woods. The city says it had no such plans.
Why not just ignore the old map, since it never had been followed?
The paper street "is no man's land, so to speak," Yates said. The city can't give the land away and "there's no way for anyone to assume ownership of it."
So a 101-year-old paper road remains valid because nothing else can be done.
The new residents of Quail Lane hope the city chooses to do something with their road, even though they disregarded the old caveat, "Let the buyer beware," when they moved onto an unimproved street.
"You can't demand, you can only ask in cases like this," said resident Aubrey Moles. "I realize they can't do everything people want."
But Lisa Adams said when she moved, her appraiser told her it was a public road. It was her understanding that the city was going to pave the rest of the road, probably a year after it paved the first part.
"To me, it would be to their benefit," she said. "If they do it right, houses could be built on both sides [of the now-unimproved part], which would mean more taxes."
by CNB