Territorial acquistion

Our modest estate. The deck has been replaced with a larger version and the two garage structures shown here have been demolished. (Click on the illustration to see a larger version)


As I have mentioned before, our property is bounded on the south and the east by alleys that were platted in 1903 but were never built.
The alley to the south is graveled and we use it as a driveway. The platted alley to the east is grass-covered and has nothing to distinguish it from the lawns on either side so, without measuring from a known reference point, there is no way to see where it lies.
I've determined our eastern property line by measuring from the back of the house and also from the front property line and can pinpoint it within a couple of inches, plus or minus.
So we decided to position the new garage on an east-west axis 10 feet inside our eastern property line and six feet south of the north property line, satisfying the town's setback regulations. Since the garage will be about 38 feet wide, that puts the west end of it a bit closer to the house and the new deck than we'd like, but it was something we were prepared to live with.
Until yesterday.
That's when Maria spoke with Donna, our neighbor to the south, who recalled that a previous owner of our house who was a member of the town council at the time, had the alley to the east vacated.
Aha!
If that is true - and we intend to confirm it before the May 14 building commission meeting where we seek a building permit - it adds 8 feet 3 inches to the east end of our property and makes it possible to move the garage that much farther east and open up more space between garage and house.
It also means our neighbor to the north, who also owns the tract east of this presumably vacated alley, gains some land and has an intact L-shaped property wrapping around the north and east sides of ours. I assume he doesn't know the alley was vacated because he didn't mention it when we described our project and the boundaries that dictate where the garage can be.
It's not a huge gain, but it does amount to about 458 more square feet, or about a 5 percent increase in our total property area. The real gain, of course, is in the aesthetic value of having the house and garage a more reasonable distance apart.