For someday subdivision, city accepts an alley plus land

Grand Alley in Electric City will one day become Grand Avenue, at least about 1,200 feet of it.

The city council accepted a quitclaim deed Aug. 13 giving it a 15-foot strip of land along its present Grand Alley, allowing someday for a full width street. The city already has a 45-foot right-of-way through the alley.

The 15-foot strip of land was left over from a surveying problem when developers put in housing on an 80-acre piece of land they purchased from homesteader Dover Perry. The three developers, John R. Whitelaw, A.J. Gerard and Bill Brashears, known as A. B. J. Company, Inc., are the same ones who quitclaimed the 15-foot strip of land to the city last week.

It isn’t clear who will eventually put in the street. But when the street is put in, it will allow some seven property owners whose property butts up to the alley to subdivide the back part of their properties for potential building sites.

Mayor Jerry Sands told the city council that it might be some time before the street would be built and that it might be first graveled and chip sealed, not paved.

The 15-foot section that could become Grand Avenue lies between Stevens Street and Electric Boulevard.

The 15-foot strip also extends along the alley all the way to Western Avenue, but that other portion will remain an alley.

Mayor Sands told the council that Brashears, who owns one of the seven properties that abutt the alley, has indicated that he wants to subdivide the back side of his property. Others along that strip may also want to do this.

The city, Sands stated, may have to set fences that have been placed at the back of the properties back 15 feet, since the city now owns that part of the back of the properties.

The error in surveying occurred when two separate surveyors used different starting points when they drew the lines. That was several years ago.

Sands said that it wasn’t certain who would pay for the cost of putting the street in, but he did tell the council that if the city did, then it would get its money back through various fees it would charge.