I know it’s a shot in the dark that someone on here has done something similar but my DH and I are about to start looking into purchasing some land from the state DOT.
We have a property on a lake that has an egress driveway that goes over state DOT land bordering the two lane highway. We didn’t really care about this when we bought the property last year because the DOT land is mostly steep/hilly forest that isn’t useable to us and the dirt road suited us just fine. Based on the survey map we have from the previous owners there is a shed and part of some big retaining walls on the DOT property that the past owners obviously thought was part of their property. Still not a big deal except now those retaining walls, which our properties share and which hold up the parking/driveway area, are failing. They were old wood railway tie walls and have completely rotted. I got in contact with the DOT because half of the walls are on their land. Per them, they can’t help us pay for fixing or replacing them because they are not something they built (or authorized) or need. A helpful guy at DOT was able to tell me that if we just repair the part on the DOT side that no one would care. However, if we wanted to replace them we would need permits, insurance, etc.. since we would be doing work on state land. Ach the headaches. He mentioned that the area was weird however because the state only owns 50’ inward of land along the highway except for this weird 200’ inward plot of land that runs along our property border. He thought it might be worth it to look into buying some of the land so we can do whatever we damn well please with the walls. We think the idea is worth looking into.
The DOT guy is going to email me a POC to talk to about purchasing land on Monday but I was also able to find this:
http://www.ct.gov/dot/lib/dot/documents/dpropman/purchase_procedures_feb_2013.pdfI believe the property would meet numbers 5 and/or 6. We should be able to buy the land if the DOT determines they won’t need it in the future. I can’t imagine they could, at least for the part we are interested in. There is quite a steep grade that wouldn’t be useful for staging equipment.
I believe the state has to own 50’ along the highway based on the areas up and down the road and speaking the DOT guy. We would only really want the 300’ line bordering our property line. So that brings the land area to 45,000 sq ft (300’ x (200’-50’)) at most. That might cost a pretty penny depending on what they consider the zoning (I can’t imagine trying to build anything useful on it but that doesn’t mean anything). I think the smallest land we would be able to buy is if we went 50’ from our property line to encompass the shed and the rest of the retaining wall. That would be 15,000 sq ft or only 0.34 acres. BUT the weird extra land the DOT has, that it usually doesn’t, also extends 100’ behind our property line and I am not sure if they would force us to buy it as a whole plot. So if they want us to take all the extra property off their hands or they won’t sell then we are looking at (400’ x (200’-50’)) = 60,000 sq ft (1.3 acres).
Obviously, I don’t know how flexible they are going to be on this. Any thoughts or insights would be appreciated. I would love to figure out a way to sell it to them that it is to their advantage to sell at least some of the land to us (I think it is but I am biased).
*All numbers approximate. PM me if you think you can/want to help but need more detail. Sorry this was so long :(
