Title
Singer Hill Road Deed of Dedication
Body
RECOMMENDED ACTION (Motion):
Adopt the Oregon City Deed of Dedication for Singer Hill Road and authorize the City Manager Pro-Tem to execute the document.
BACKGROUND:
The 922 Main Street property is owned by the Oregon City Urban Renewal Agency and currently has a reservation for a public easement for the section of Singer Hill Road that now exists on the southerly portion of the property.
In September 2015, the Urban Renewal Agency contracted with Compass Land Surveyors to perform survey work for 922 Main Street. This work was contracted in order to determine and delineate railroad right-of-way for the purposes of acquiring a better understanding of a developable footprint for the property. Due to complexities associated with the site, Compass Land Surveyors needed to perform an extended analysis of property records. The research on the property goes back to 1918, which was the year of the first recorded document providing a description for the location of Singer Hill Road. The deed indicates that there is a reservation for a public easement over Singer Hill Road and the document appears to be the source of information used by subsequent maps to plot the location of Singer Hill Road. It is also noteworthy that this document is consistent with subsequent deeds in that it shows that the road was only considered an easement and suggests that underlying fee ownership runs with the subject property.
The second item is the issue of road dedication as it relates to the question of how the Urban Renewal Agency can easily sell the subject property (which includes the land under Singer Hill Road) to a third party without resolution of the Singer Hill Road question. Further analysis suggests that an efficient method of resolving this issue is to proceed with a formal dedication process. Once a dedication has been accepted, the land is still owned by the same party but the landowner no longer has any liability for ...
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