County Services Drive Donated To Putnam By Local Business

The road that leads to the Putnam County Health Department and Emergency Services buildings off of Willow Avenue has been donated to the county.

Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said the county had a 60-foot easement on that land for years which has allowed them to freely use County Services Drive. Tennessee General Partnership Company DealMakers donated the property earlier this week.

“With that being a private street or private drive, we didn’t have to turn the sirens on coming out of the emergency services building and then blast over into the subdivision, you know, around the building over there,” Porter said. “We could wait until we got to where we were coming out onto Willow.”

The land also houses the Putnam County Ambulance Services building, Porter said. When the county built those buildings on that land, the rest of the land was not developed. Over the past 15 years, the land has been sold and developed, leaving former ownership with just the 60-foot easement property.

“That right there just goes to show you what a great community we live in and are very thankful for,” Porter said. “We have a business-friendly environment that we’ve built over the last several years with the business owners and land owners and everything, so we usually don’t have very many issues and most of the folks will work with us to do those kinds of things.”

Porter said the county built the road around 2008, specifically for the purpose of using it for ambulances, so it is nice to have that property become county-owned. He said when all that remained of the property was that short stretch of road, it made sense for the previous ownership to part ways with it.

“I think there may be some kind of restrictions or regulations or something in the city that you can’t just own that strip of street like that or private drives, so they took and he asked could he donate it to the county,” Porter said.

Porter said the county also uses that land to run utilities like water lines. He said county ownership of the property would not change the level of responsibility for the road because the county has been maintaining it since it was built.

“It’s in great shape,” Porter said. “We built it for the heavy traffic of ambulances and firetrucks and everything coming in and out of it on a daily basis,” Porter said. “We actually haven’t had to do anything to it since it was constructed.”