The Columbia Board of Aldermen recently authorized the sale of a narrow lot south of Green Street to Tim and Rachel Spruill for $1,400 plus transfer expenses.

The Spruills own an adjoining tract, once the site of Bush Harrell’s sawmill, at the corner of Columbia Avenue and Green Street.

The Spruills offered $800 last June for the town’s 30×372-foot strip on the eastern side of their tract, saying they need it to improve drainage on their property.

The strip was a “paper” street, a northward extension of Pennsylvania Avenue that has been dormant for 75 years or more and never opened to traffic.

The strip is overgrown with heavy brush and small trees. A drainage ditch on the eastern edge of the strip, immediately behind four residences fronting on Virginia Avenue, terminates at New Town Ditch, an underground drainway with catch basins, that flows into Bush Harrell’s Canal and then the Scuppernong River.