Tax Maps Paved With 'Paper' Streets

Tapestry Lane could someday showcase the burgeoning wealth that has roosted along Watertown's southwest corridor. But for now, it remains a developer's vision, and one that exists only on paper. This "paper street" exists only on tax maps and is one of about 60 within the city limits. Tapestry Lane, which splits from Loomus Drive, was created less than 20 years ago and still holds the potential for development while other paper streets have sat idle for more than 100 years.
Companies with plans to purchase vacant land in the city might find that these paper streets will slow development and cost thousands of dollars to research.
Paper streets are formed when private developers file with the city plans to subdivide their land. The individual lots are sold to potential homeowners, and a strip of land, usually connecting to an existing road, is set aside. On this strip, the developer will usually construct a road, giving property owners access to their land. If the lots don't sell as expected, the streets are never built. The streets remain unzoned and untaxed because they are expected to be given to the municipality.
If the owners who formed lots within the past 20 years stop paying taxes, enough information exists for the city to foreclose on the lot and auction it to the highest bidder.
Researching the property owners' whereabouts on these older unrealized developments has become too tedious for city staff. The developments proposed as late as the 1940s are harder to research because the landowners have moved from the area, sold the lots to third parties or died.
"A lot of these streets are still owned by private developers," said Kenneth A. Mix, city planning and community development coordinator. "About half, the city has the deed and half don't."
The city this spring will auction 18 properties, some of which were abandoned by property owners who purchased land attached to paper streets. When it became clear that the land would never be developed, the owners stopped paying taxes. Some of those parcels were then taken by the city for back taxes.
M32 Charles St. is a 5,000-square-foot lot along Cleveland Street owned by the city. The hillside lot was once subdivided for a single-family house but remains vacant and covered in brush.
"An engineer probably drew up the plans sight unseen, and when they took a look at the land, they saw they couldn't build there," Mr. Mix said.
At least a dozen properties between Cleveland and Lillian streets were subdivided and do not have any road frontage. According to tax maps, Francis, Charles, Seymour and Stuart streets all connect to Lillian Street, even though none of them physically does.
West Division Street, a paper street owned by Michael D. Doney that connects Mill Street with Route 11, was rezoned by the council in December. Mr. Doney said at a Dec. 3 meeting that he intended to subdivide the land and sell a portion of it to a neighbor, dissolving the paper street.
Mr. Mix said the process took more than a year to complete.
"And that was an easy one," he said.
Other paper streets are more complex. An owner of the road connecting Hancock and Lincoln streets has not been found. Because finding the owner can be such a daunting task, the city can hire consultants to do the research.
Brownell Abstract Corp., 135 Park Place, offers title searching, abstracting and title insurance for land in the north country.
Owner Michael D. Yonkovig said he receives a few requests each year from private property owners searching for information about unresolved properties. Mr. Yonkovig said that in many instances, property owners' land will end at the center of the proposed road, giving them the right to access their land, even if the road is never built.
A deal to get utilities to those properties would have to be struck between the property owners and the municipality.
A land rights dispute has been brewing for the past few months over Gardener Avenue, a paper street that connects to Huntington Street.
When the owner of the paper street couldn't be found, the city took claim to the thoroughfare and sold a quit-claim deed to the land to Riverside Gardens LLC in 2001. When the Riverside Gardens planted trees and flowers and constructed a shed, it landlocked another property owned by Lynn Maitland, who now has filed suit against the company.
"The property owners were well aware of the situation of the property at the time they purchased it," city Attorney Robert J. Slye said. "I look at it now and they bought our right to build a city street because that's the only right we had."
Riverside Gardens asked the city in October to refund the purchase price and taxes paid for the plot of land.
The City Council decided early this month not to fulfill that request.
"We don't owe them anything from a legal standpoint," Councilman Joseph M. Butler Jr. said.
A city judge ruled that Riverside Gardens remove the objects it built so that an access road can be build to Miss Maitland's property.
"Our business sustained large costs to adhere to the judge's decision as we had to physically move our building, this disconnecting and reconnecting electricity, gardens were removed and trees were cut down and removed," Thomas W. O'Riley, owner of Riverside Gardens, wrote in a letter to the council.
While the city doesn't actively seek to find paper street owners, it will if requested, City Manager Mary M. Corriveau said.
"We'll go back and research who filed for the development," she said. "We need to determine what the deeds say before we can do anything with the land."