County staff from the attorney's office have been busily working to research the deeds for the properties out at Perdido Key for the last three and a half weeks since the bombshell discovery was made that many of these properties had perpetual easments embedded within their deeds guaranteeing public access in perpetuity.
It's a big story that has simmered down a bit as we dig into the minutae of historic records and ancient "land patents"
A number of news outlets have asked where we are on this research, and I am asking staff for a thorough update this morning.
But as of right now--my understanding of the issue is that the following is what we know currently.
-Thus far it appears that the 64 parcels from the state park
to Perdido Skye have the 75’ for public beach language contained within the
deeds.
-A large swath of the parcels west of the state park were
part of a 1926 land patent signed by Calvin Coolidge that did not/does not have
any language contained within it that guarantees public access in perpetuity
-Grand Caribbean does not have deeded access to sandy beach
portions of the Sandy Key property directly to their south—although there is a
public easement and a walkway from Grand Caribbean to this beach?
-The parcel that was to become Sandy Key had all public
access extinguished by a late 1970’s court ruling. (but could that action have
been void ab initio if the original grant from the Pensacola Chamber of
Commerce earlier had expressly granted public access in perpetuity?)
--The status of whether or not the county has obtained the original land transfer deeds made to the Pensacola Chamber of
Commerce sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s is not known—neither is it known whether or not these deeds contain language guaranteeing perpetual public beach access easements
--The status of public beach access easements contained on
the deeds for the balance of the parcels between Perdido Key and Johnson’s
Beach (less Sandy Key and Grand Caribbean) remains unknown
-I do not know when we expect the abstracts for the
balance of those parcels between Perdido Skye and Johnson’s Beach which
hopefully we (county) have already requested.
Finally—I have asked county staff to have this information on what is/isn't known about the public access of these parcels to be graphically represented on
one map of that strip of properties (i.e. with the parcels that have 75’ of
access one color, our existing public access points identified with another
color, parcels for which we’ve “ruled-out” the existence of public access
language in red, and unknown parcels indicated with another color.)
I'm waiting on staff's response to this status request and map request--and I'll publish their responses here when I get them...
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