The quality of a property’s frontage on a street or way can define its development potential and therefore its value. The gold standard, which will allow a comfortable check in the ‘frontage’ box in most Massachusetts municipalities, is having the amount of frontage required by the local zoning regulation on a public way. Not every city and town has a clean list of public ways, and there are often cost-based disincentives to declaring a way to be public when the status is unclear. An Appeals Court case decided last week, Barry v. Planning Board of Belchertown (pdf), confirms that there’s a seldom-discussed method of establishing that property fronts on a public way – estoppel.
There are three means of creating a “public” way in Massachusetts. See Fenn v. Town of Middleborough. The first method fell out of use in 1846 due to a change in the law. This involved dedicating the way to public use and the public accepting