The city Zoning Hearing Board on Wednesday granted a special exception that will enable the owner of a pair of multi-unit self-storage buildings on Sixth Avenue in Eldorado to add a third such building.
The special exception was granted to Starr Storage Partners LLC on condition that the company become legal owner of never-developed 46th Street, which cuts through the middle of the storage complex, with one existing building encroaching onto the “paper” street by 38 feet and with the proposed new structure slated to encroach on the paper street by 11 feet.
An ordinance adopted Monday by the City Council titled “Disposition of Surplus Real and Personal Property” will make it a bit simpler for Starr Storage to obtain ownership of the paper street.
Prior to the passage of that ordinance, property owners who wished to take possession of adjacent streets or alleys that had never been completed or opened for public use by the city after 21 years or more had elapsed from their having been created had to petition the City Council to abandon the real estate via a “vacation” ordinance.
Now, those adjacent owners can obtain an application form from the city and obtain the property through a council resolution, which speeds up the process, according to City Manager Christopher McGuire.
Starr Storage needed the special exception because the complex is in a residential zone in which self-storage buildings aren’t permitted.
The board granted the company an expansion of its existing non-conforming use of the property.
The proposed new 40-by-50-foot, 12-unit metal building would be constructed on a concrete slab, according to Kevin Starr, a principal of the company.
There is high demand for self-storage, as evidenced by the existing units on the property all being occupied and by the company receiving three to five calls a week from people looking to rent, Starr said.
In addition to being entitled to the section of 46th Street that cuts through the property as the owner of the property on each side, the company would also be entitled to the half of an unopened alley that runs along the back of the complex, parallel to Sixth Avenue, according to Zoning Board member Horace McAnuff, a surveyor and owner of Geomatics Solutions LLC.
In cases like those of the storage property, a developer many years ago may have laid out streets and sold lots along those streets for proposed neighborhoods, but if the municipality didn’t take those streets over, they were then subject to reversion to adjacent property owners, though subject also to easements for any owners who might rely on those proposed streets for access to their properties, according to McAnuff.
A municipality’s vacation of a paper street provides the property owner who petitioned for the vacation clear title to the property, according to an online source.
Conversely, if an adjacent owner occupies a paper street for 21 years in a way “that is actual, open, notorious, exclusive and hostile,” that individual can claim ownership through “adverse possession,” according to the online source.
Apparently, the prior owner of the storage complex property who built the structure that occupies unopened 46th Street did so because the proposal to build there was not recognized as problematic by city officials at the time, according to Sabrina Appel-McMillen, the city’s planning and development manager.
