tangent4ronpaul
10-14-2013, 12:55 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/nyregion/for-sale-in-queens-a-ribbon-of-land-3-feet-wide.html
Just a few weeks back, a local community board said that a small piece of city-owned land on a leafy block in Murray Hill, Queens, could be put up for sale. The surrounding streets are lined with smooth lawns and shingled houses. The spot itself is grassy and dappled with trees. But there is a catch.
The property, which stretches 500 feet long, is only 3 feet wide and runs smack down the middle of a block of homes, through nearly two dozen backyards. There is no access to the street without scurrying across somebody’s tidy front lawn.
“It’s this very thin strip behind a whole row of houses,” said Marilyn Bitterman, district manager of the community board that approved the sale. “They just want to get rid of it.”
Vacant lots in the right part of town can sell for $14 million, for $30 million and even much more, and so New Yorkers have become accustomed to thinking of land as untapped gold mines. But even here, there are properties so irregularly shaped and so unfortunately situated that they are notable not for their value but for their peculiarity — and many of them happen to be owned by the City of New York.
“There are interior lots that are oddly shaped and go through people’s backyards, and those people don’t even know,” said Joey Kara Koch, deputy commissioner for asset management for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which will be charged with selling the three-foot-wide lot and oversees many more. Ms. Koch continued, “We have ones that are literally where people park their car, or where they have been gardening all these years, and then they learn, this is city property.”
Like Eun Sook Cho, for example, who has lived next door to the city’s three-foot bowling alley of property for 10 years without any inkling that it was considered a separate lot, and not part of her and her neighbors’ own properties. On the books, it is considered a vacant lot, but it is actually quite crowded with fences, trees and the lawn furniture of many adjoining backyards.
When asked if she would be interested in purchasing a portion of that land, Ms. Cho only looked perplexed and wondered aloud if this meant she would have to move her fence.
The origins of odd lot shapes — like awkward triangles, long slivers and rectangles with sizable bites taken out — are usually a mystery to city administrators, though they are assumed to come from old surveying errors or ancient easements, which allow one to use another’s property.
While available city records do not say exactly how the public came to own this hidden ribbon of land, the city once owned thousands of formerly private properties, taken over from owners who neglected to pay their taxes. Many buildings accumulated during the city’s economic crisis of the 1970s have since been sold off, but the city is still working through the backlog of land, some of which may have been on the city’s books since the 19th century. Each property must be appraised, no matter how tiny or evidently useless, and submitted to a lengthy review process, so progress is not swift.
A catalog of city-owned properties sold at auction last year included a crooked 20-foot-by-21-foot nubbin of a lot, accessorized by a forest of weeds and a large Budget truck parked askew. A long, skinny vacant lot in Far Rockaway, accompanied by an ominous warning that “all or part of this parcel may be part of a tidal wetland.” There was also a triangular shaped property that did indeed look as if it was being lovingly maintained as part of somebody’s private garden.
Most of the properties the city sells end up at auction, but if a lot is appraised and found to be essentially worthless, it enters the city program for “slivers, access ways and interior lots,” perhaps too eagerly called the SAIL Away program. In these cases, the city approaches neighboring owners and tries to sell them the properties for a nominal amount of money, maybe $5 per square foot, Ms. Koch said, or even $1 per square foot. Though the three-footer has not yet been appraised, this is most likely the direction it is headed.
And what might the neighbors do with such a thing? Given the location and dimensions, development would not be possible, so might they pave it for a slim little skateboard park? Buy it to insist that an unloved neighbor move their ugly fence? Build an ugly fence of one’s own?
So while the city is eager to rid itself of that three-foot-wide lot, to get it back into the tax base and cared for by somebody else, it may not be an easy sell, even to the people who live right next door.
“Well, I guess it depends,” said Billy Copperill, a retired New York City police officer who has lived in a white shingled house abutting the property for 40 years. “I could be coerced at a real low price, I mean, real low.”
But even $400, about $5 a square foot for the portion that touches his yard, did not immediately sound to Mr. Copperill like a sufficient bargain.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/10/15/nyregion/15appraisal-1/15appraisal-1-articleLarge.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/10/15/nyregion/15appraisal-map/15appraisal-map-articleInline.png
What would you do with this piece of property?
-t
Just a few weeks back, a local community board said that a small piece of city-owned land on a leafy block in Murray Hill, Queens, could be put up for sale. The surrounding streets are lined with smooth lawns and shingled houses. The spot itself is grassy and dappled with trees. But there is a catch.
The property, which stretches 500 feet long, is only 3 feet wide and runs smack down the middle of a block of homes, through nearly two dozen backyards. There is no access to the street without scurrying across somebody’s tidy front lawn.
“It’s this very thin strip behind a whole row of houses,” said Marilyn Bitterman, district manager of the community board that approved the sale. “They just want to get rid of it.”
Vacant lots in the right part of town can sell for $14 million, for $30 million and even much more, and so New Yorkers have become accustomed to thinking of land as untapped gold mines. But even here, there are properties so irregularly shaped and so unfortunately situated that they are notable not for their value but for their peculiarity — and many of them happen to be owned by the City of New York.
“There are interior lots that are oddly shaped and go through people’s backyards, and those people don’t even know,” said Joey Kara Koch, deputy commissioner for asset management for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which will be charged with selling the three-foot-wide lot and oversees many more. Ms. Koch continued, “We have ones that are literally where people park their car, or where they have been gardening all these years, and then they learn, this is city property.”
Like Eun Sook Cho, for example, who has lived next door to the city’s three-foot bowling alley of property for 10 years without any inkling that it was considered a separate lot, and not part of her and her neighbors’ own properties. On the books, it is considered a vacant lot, but it is actually quite crowded with fences, trees and the lawn furniture of many adjoining backyards.
When asked if she would be interested in purchasing a portion of that land, Ms. Cho only looked perplexed and wondered aloud if this meant she would have to move her fence.
The origins of odd lot shapes — like awkward triangles, long slivers and rectangles with sizable bites taken out — are usually a mystery to city administrators, though they are assumed to come from old surveying errors or ancient easements, which allow one to use another’s property.
While available city records do not say exactly how the public came to own this hidden ribbon of land, the city once owned thousands of formerly private properties, taken over from owners who neglected to pay their taxes. Many buildings accumulated during the city’s economic crisis of the 1970s have since been sold off, but the city is still working through the backlog of land, some of which may have been on the city’s books since the 19th century. Each property must be appraised, no matter how tiny or evidently useless, and submitted to a lengthy review process, so progress is not swift.
A catalog of city-owned properties sold at auction last year included a crooked 20-foot-by-21-foot nubbin of a lot, accessorized by a forest of weeds and a large Budget truck parked askew. A long, skinny vacant lot in Far Rockaway, accompanied by an ominous warning that “all or part of this parcel may be part of a tidal wetland.” There was also a triangular shaped property that did indeed look as if it was being lovingly maintained as part of somebody’s private garden.
Most of the properties the city sells end up at auction, but if a lot is appraised and found to be essentially worthless, it enters the city program for “slivers, access ways and interior lots,” perhaps too eagerly called the SAIL Away program. In these cases, the city approaches neighboring owners and tries to sell them the properties for a nominal amount of money, maybe $5 per square foot, Ms. Koch said, or even $1 per square foot. Though the three-footer has not yet been appraised, this is most likely the direction it is headed.
And what might the neighbors do with such a thing? Given the location and dimensions, development would not be possible, so might they pave it for a slim little skateboard park? Buy it to insist that an unloved neighbor move their ugly fence? Build an ugly fence of one’s own?
So while the city is eager to rid itself of that three-foot-wide lot, to get it back into the tax base and cared for by somebody else, it may not be an easy sell, even to the people who live right next door.
“Well, I guess it depends,” said Billy Copperill, a retired New York City police officer who has lived in a white shingled house abutting the property for 40 years. “I could be coerced at a real low price, I mean, real low.”
But even $400, about $5 a square foot for the portion that touches his yard, did not immediately sound to Mr. Copperill like a sufficient bargain.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/10/15/nyregion/15appraisal-1/15appraisal-1-articleLarge.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/10/15/nyregion/15appraisal-map/15appraisal-map-articleInline.png
What would you do with this piece of property?
-t