CITY MOVES TO CORRECT DECADES-OLD STREET SNAFU

By Juan Montoya

Fifteen years ago Jimmy and Janie Perez bought a commercially-zoned lot adjacent to the frontage road along us 77 and bound on the other side by Paredes Line Road.

It seemed like a good investment. 

HEB was across Paredes, so the business would have potential customers for any enterprise put there. On the other side, freeway traffic could provide innumerable customer opportunities. 

The land – Lot 2, Block 14 of Colonia Mexico Subdivision – seemed like the ideal location, location, location. The Colonia Mexico was bisected when the expressway was built and parts of the roads – named after some of the first Mexican presidents like Victoria, Allende, Iturbide, Lerdo, etc. – lay on either side of the new thoroughfare. Nonetheless, they remained city-owned streets.
(Click on graphic to enlarge.)

Then a couple of things got in the way. The city – in its hike-and-bike building frenzy – took over the abandoned Southern Pacific easement and built the trial on the easement, effectively closing access to the freeway. Additionally, when the freeway was originally built, the city did not, as in the case of Iturbide Street south of the property, pave the Allende Street right-of-way but allowed it to lie fallow, as it were. 

No one, unless you were a property owner and read the deed, knew that a city street existed there. 

When the property owner who owned the lot in front of the Perezes decided to make a parking lot out of the city Allende St. ROW next to her business, she told the couple that she had bought the ROW from the city in past years.                                                                                    That owner, Noelia Martinez (Chic Jewelry And Things), never produced the title transfer or sale papers, but made  a parking space nonetheless, and at one time even erected a fence across it to prevent anyone – even the Perezes – from entering their property.

Additionally, the city's Traffic Engineering Dept. had no record of the city ever abandoning – much less selling – the ROW.

It took the Perez paying local attorney Dennis Downey to send off a cease and desist letter to Martinez before she relented and removed the fence.

But instead of relief, after the fence came down and when the couple went to Traffic Engineering, all they were able to achieve was to have a "No Parking" sign erected at the end of the offending driveway/ROW (See graphic at right), furthering closing off their property from an egress.

Between the city's building the hike-and-bike trail, not extending Allende to the frontage road, and Martinez paving over the existing ROW that allowed the ingress and egress to their land, the couple  found that they were effectively landlocked.

"For the last 15 years we have paid our taxes on that land and can't do anything with it," said Mrs. Perez. "We have gone to the city numerous times and they have not been able to provide us with any solution."

Now, after reaching out to City Commissioner Cesar de Leon, who in turn brought in Asst. City Manager Michael Lopez, the city has told the couple that Calle Allende was actually abandoned by resolution of the city commission back in 1965 when the expressway was being built.

However, the fact that the city abandoned the road does not mean that it relinquished ownership of the property and it, in fact, remains property of the city.

However, the owner of the property fronting Paredes – Noelia Martinez – did not have permission from the city to have placed concrete on the city's right of way. The city does not build streets when areas are developed, he said.

Lopez told the parties that if both property owners are willing to work some agreement that allows the Perezes to access their property,  the city will go as far as building a small ramp to allow them entry to the lot in back. However, if there is no agreement reached, Lopez said that the city will move forward with actions that are appropriate when individuals are in the city's right of way, including removing the concrete drive that was built by Martinez.

Will this problem finally be resolved? After 15 years, the ball is in the property owners' court.