ATHOL—As part of the approval process for a 43-unit affordable housing project on the site of the closed Exchange Street parking garage, the town hopes to make a decades-old casual agreement for access more official.
At the Aug. 9 meeting of the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC), discussion centered around access to the parking lot adjacent to the garage. Chairperson Keith McGuirk said a large portion of the lot consists of several privately owned parcels. To ensure future access to the parking area, rights of way from several property owners whose parcels make up much of the lot will need to be obtained.
Showing EDIC members a schematic of the area, McGuirk also pointed out that the Exchange Street Entrance and right of way into the lot “is only 13 feet wide. That is not adequate as a right of way for the American Land Title Association or lenders for this project – it’s not going to fly.”
McGuirk explained that the only acceptable right of way that the developer’s lender and title insurer would accept is one which crosses six parcels that belong to the different property owners. In the past, people could cross that area without issue—what McGuirk referred to as “on a handshake”—but for this project, a formal agreement is required.
“There’s no rights of way over any of them,” McGuirk explained, adding that the owners, “could put up a chain link fence tomorrow and tell people, ‘You can’t come here.’ There are no rights of way over any of it. So this is a big problem. Nobody can get title insurance, especially on a project of that size, and nobody is going to lend any money.”
EDIC member Luis Cisneros suggested the town explore offering a tax break for the property owners in exchange for a formal agreement on a right of way for the parking area. McGuirk said this was something the town would need to do eventually, even without the proposed development.
“We have to do this if any project there is going to work,” he said. “We have to have control of this.”
McGuirk said the property owners would be both “burdened and benefited” by agreeing to rights of way.
“They’re going to be burdened by the fact they have to let people cross over their property and park there,” he said. “But they’re going to be benefited by the fact that they’ll all have legal access to their backyards. Nobody can ever stop them from utilizing it.”
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.