By Tom Jordan
The face of Rockville Centre will soon be changing, as Village officials have decided to erase a small street from the official village map. A 30-foot by 100-foot section of Woodgreen Place, east of Village Avenue and north of Canterbury Road, will cease to exist once the property is legally turned over to residents, who long ago claimed it as their own, anyway.
The section of Woodgreen Place "is what is known as a paper street," Village Attorney Martha Krisel said. "It exists and it can be seen on a map, but it never really developed. It looks now like part of a private property."
Steve Kristas, Village engineer, is not certain when the one-way street was built, but found documentation of road work being done there as far back as the mid-1960s.
"There's documentation of an asphalting job there in 1965 or so. There may have been some sort of road prior to that, but that was the first trace of major activity that we could find," Mr. Kristas said.
Because the road leads to nowhere, the Board of Trustees began entertaining the idea of allowing it to become private property. After making sure there was nothing in the infrastructure preventing such a transaction, the board voted to discontinue the street and turn the deed over to the owners of the two houses that abut it. Those homeowners will pay taxes on the extra parcel.
The official map of Rockville Centre, kept in the village engineers office on Maple Avenue, will be amended to signify the change.
"The village has discontinued portions of streets before, most recently a section of Nassau Street," Ms. Krisel, the attorney, said. "It's a bit of a process, but it's to the advantage of the homeowners in that area and to the entire village."
