A little bit o'land

From the Queens Tribune:

The City is hoping to find a good home for some of its stray land.

The Department of Citywide Administrative Services is looking to speed up the sale of its SAIL portfolio – which stands for sliver, access way and interior lots – by asking the State to allow it to bypass the mandatory auction process and sell these orphaned territories to adjacent property owners. In many cases, these neighbors are already using the lot, while the City misses out on potential tax revenue.

The City acquired these properties from tax delinquencies during the 1970s and 1980s, and although it no longer seizes land under this procedure, it has spent decades trying to auction off these lots back into private hands, according to Mark Daly, a spokesman for DCAS.

Most of these seized properties have already been auctioned off, developed or turned into parkland. “Now we’re dealing with these oddities,” said Daly.

Daly said DCAS has resisted auctioning these pieces to avoid “neighborhood discord” that can result when someone not adjacent to the lot buys it hoping to turn a quick buck by reselling it or charging the neighbor to use it.

A sliver is defined as a tract smaller than 10 feet wide, or generally less than 1,000 sq. ft. The slivers, access ways and interior lots must have only one logical user, such as auto repair shop that uses it to store cars, a corner plot with a single neighbor or someone who owns two thirds of a driveway.