Jamestown Press — Paper street on north end causes stir

Jan 3, 2019

By Tim Riel — Case could be a harbinger of things to come in area

JAMESTOWN — The town is being asked to reverse a decision from September that relinquished its rights to Bell Lane, a paper road that has been used as shoreline access for decades.

Acting on a request from the Joseph James Oliveira Trust, the town councilors signed an agreement that said Bell Lane “is of no use or benefit to the public,” a measure that “waived and relinquished any and all right” to the street.

According to the Friends of Jamestown Rights-of-Way, the ruling “thumbed its nose” at the state constitution, which guarantees “privileges of the shore.” The advocacy group, led by Buoy Street’s Carol Nelson Lee, said abandoning the road “harms the social fabric of the neighborhood.”

“The town should have held a public hearing on the matter,” the group wrote.

Bell Lane is one of dozens of paper roads in the northernmost 500 acres of Conanicut Island. These streets were mapped for summer visitors to navigate through Conanicut Park, a proposed colony of 2,000 homes with a steamboat landing and hotel. An economic depression in 1873, however, curtailed those plans. The curving roads never got off the drawing board, leaving the remnants of these undeveloped roads to be deemed paper streets.

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