Legal Issues on Commercial Property
I, a lowly unlicensed construction surveyor, was tasked in the layout of a parking lot in a big city retail/residential area. I found concrete monuments from the original survey but most of the work involved tying in to existing curb and I felt comfortable working within those clearly defined limits.
However, as the second phase began, we were to place 30? curb along an old side street (which had no curb), and that got me nervous because I could not find several other boundary markers on the survey. So I set up on one monument and backsighted the other (only twenty feet away) and found an iron pin (200??). Occupied the iron pin and turned from the monument to find the punch in the residential neighbor??s concrete driveway as described in the survey.
Satisfied, I laid out the curb, however, not only did an incompetent contractor screw it up (decided to jog around a puny utility pole which should have been moved) but he badly disturbed the iron pin. Grrrr??
Now??the long knives come out. The county/city Authorities Having Jurisdiction trashed it, and rightly so. It was garbage. The 30? curb reduced o 18? and back to 30, and kinda wandered along. BTW, I layout and move on. I don??t direct contractors.
So now, tasked with re-layout, having lost my iron pin, you couldn??t drive a six penny nail up my ass with a sledge hammer, so I resect from one of the monuments and the driveway punch and traverse to a bent rebar described in the survey, which I had been avoiding because it was a wino hangout. I landed on the base of the bent pin which satisfied me. Thus, I took shots on the sidewalk curb across the street and was matching it perfectly. More satisfaction.
Oh, that punch in the resident??s driveway? That was a property corner. The pre-construction survey included that fact in the narrative describing their work. The AHJ??s knew it. The owner of the commercial property for whom we were working knew it. But now, we (the GC) can??t get a Certificate of Occupancy because that driveway is part of a plantings buffer. I let my people know when I laid it out months ago but they sat on it.
Long story short, except for too late, I have a question.
How the hell does the FACT that a neighbor??s property encroaches a commercial property by thousands of square feet, which includes a neighbor??s only access to their house, get ignored? How were the plans approved without prior resolution?
Amazing!
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