Residents of Jade Place won’t notice anything different, but on paper their street just got a new name.
The Philomath City Council voted 5-0 at its Oct. 12 meeting to adopt an ordinance to officially rename Emerald Drive to Jade Place. The change corrects a discrepancy that dates back more than 30 years to when the plat for the Westbrook Phase II subdivision was recorded with Benton County.
“For all intents and purposes, everybody knows the street is Jade Place. Always has been Jade Place,” City Manager Chris Workman told the council. “Except for when the plat for the subdivision was originally recorded, in which case it was called Emerald Drive.”
Workman said it’s unclear when or why the name was switched. City officials do know the change happened before any houses were built or addresses were assigned because every property on the street was addressed as Jade Place. The post office, emergency services and the city’s own street maps all use that name.
The error came to light while the city was working on a street name change in the Millpond Crossing subdivision. A county surveyor noticed the mismatch and flagged it.
“Our very attentive surveyor at the county said, ‘Oh, there’s this other street as well in the city that needs to be corrected,'” Workman said.
The Philomath Planning Commission held a public hearing on the proposal Sept. 21 and recommended approval. According to a staff memo, the commission found that the change resolves an addressing inconsistency, avoids reassigning addresses and improves clarity in emergency response, postal, utility, county and city records.
The ordinance affects 11 properties — none of them will receive new address numbers.
No one testified at the council’s public hearing, and councilors had no questions for staff. The ordinance was approved on a 5-0 vote (two absent).
Workman said a cursory review hasn’t turned up any similar cases elsewhere in the city.
“Hopefully this will be the first and the last of this type,” he said. “I wasn’t here 30-something years ago when this got recorded, so I don’t know why it happened, but we’re fixing it.”
