A Plymouth property owner’s plans to officially take over a city street may lead to some complications with neighboring properties.
Allen Street starts at Jefferson Street between Mila’s Mini Market and the Coffee Lodge and extends northwest. While it is a public street, it’s largely been engulfed by surrounding parking lots owned by Milten Properties LLC.
Dr. Tod Stillson, representing Milten Properties, told the Plymouth Common Council Monday that the company is already putting money into the street. “We’ve been maintaining it, resurfaced it, and do the snow removal and really take care of the majority of Allen Street, if you will, and have since I’ve been in this location,” he said. “And it would make sense for us to, sort of be taxed to own it, as we take care of it.”
But while Milten Properties owns quite a bit of the surrounding land, the properties at the corner of Allen and Jefferson are each owned by other entities, who weren’t comfortable with Milten taking permanent possession of the entire street.
That leaves the city with two other options. One is to vacate the entire street and divide the property between all three owners, although that would result in a each owner’s half too narrow to be of much use. The other option is to leave a short stretch near Jefferson as a public street, with the section behind being turned over to Milten.
While this would avoid a complicated three-way division of the street, Street Superintendent Jim Marquardt was concerned about how the city would turn its vehicles around should it need to plow the remaining street or do other maintenance work. “Truly, we would have to have an easement with Milton Properties that we can go turn around,” he said. “We’ve done that before, when there’s not a cul-de-sac.”
Council member Jeff Houin was in favor of the arrangement. “In my mind, it’s easier to say we’ll approve the request to vacate the street in exchange for a permanent easement, rather than to try to work out a four-way agreement between all the parties that hopefully will stay in place for perpetuity.”
City officials will continue to investigate their options before the council makes any decisions.
