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Two In Tow & On The Go | You could own this lot for just $9,999 (but it’s mostly underwater)

“0 Tyee Dr NW Unit XXXX, Gig Harbor” is located just north of the Purdy Bridge behind the shopping center.

Today’s column takes a slightly different direction as I lead you away from kid destination and into an odd mix of land uses, tideland law and dashed beachy dreams. But we’re not going that far — just a bit north of the harbor to the salty shorelines of where Purdy Creek empties into the Burley Lagoon. Unfortunately, this specific destination isn’t public property, so you can’t pack up the kids and head there for a winter beach walk.

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Not yet, anyway.

Because, if the price is right, you could soon own it.

That was definitely my first thought when I tapped on the little red price bubble of curiosity a couple months ago to see what the oddly placed zeros and Xs in “0 Tyee Dr NW Unit XXXX, Gig Harbor” were all about.

For sale is a 3,520-square-foot triangular-shaped waterfront lot, located behind the stores near the Purdy Bridge. The land appears to have old dock pilings still in the water. The zoning is listed as “NURBSENS” (find my guesses about what that awesomeness is below). The seller, who inherited the property, doesn’t have detailed information about the land uses and is selling it “as-is.”

My first introduction to the site was the low-low asking-price of $15,000 — already cut in half from its $29,000 market debut last summer. Then the ask dropped to $9,999 just after Christmas, which is still active as of Friday Jan. 10, 2025. Coming from California’s wine country and now Gig Harbor, the $10K price tag for land is easily the cheapest I’ve seen in the last 10+ years.

So, for a split second, or, you know, for a whole column’s worth of brainstorming sessions and an afternoon site visit with my super awesome history pal Greg Spadoni, I may have let my imagination run a little bit wild on just what a mom and two kids could do with such a parcel-icious purchase all of their own. (OK, ok, we’d invite Bowen too) 🙂

Standing on the lot overlooking Purdy Creek as it opens into Burley Lagoon.

Day dreaming

Because … our own private beach? Heck yes! Excuse me while I daydream about digging canvas sling-back chairs into some muddy gravel that might once have been optimistically called sand (but now I know better) to soak up mid-afternoon sunsets*. The kids and I could skip rocks across the water’s glassy surface and wave hello to the much-debated Taylor Shellfish geoduck property (its storage/support lot is a direct neighbor).

Basically — we’d just make the best of it. No matter how small or oddly triangle-shaped the random little waterfront lot might be, it’s priced to sell (although it’s been on the market awhile — and I don’t know all the legal or liability issues with waterfronts).

“NURBSENS”

The curious no-address Tyee Drive NW has a lot of unknowns. It’s listed in Pierce County records as “Lots 3 & 4, Block 18, Plat of Purdy, Pierce County, W.T., except that portion lying below the meander line,” according to the Assessor-Treasurer’s office. To determine property boundaries involving bodies of water, surveyors typically draw meander lines by following the general shape of the shoreline where the water meets the land.

Meanwhile, its real estate listing has phrases like “the seller, who inherited the property, lacks detailed information about it” and “buyers should verify all zoning classifications, potential uses, and requirements independently,” suggesting that either no one has fully investigated the property or they’re deliberately passing the responsibility to the buyer.  Although … I now have quite a bit of info on the parcel — as does our Gig Harbor Now history columnist.

But, before we get into more deets, I gotta talk about how this listing includes my new favorite word:“NURBSENS”.

When you see NURBSENS pop up in a real estate listing under land uses, it sounds like the best geeky made-up word ever (and definitely the name of a future pet). But my guess is it just might be a quirky result of the local multiple listing service (MLS) database squishing together a county abbreviation. With a little brainstorming and some Googling, it seems like “NURBSENS” could stand for something like “Non-Urban Sensitive” or even “North Urban Sensitive.”

Digging deeper, Pierce County has a zoning designation called the Urban Sensitive Resource Overlay (USRO). This zoning is all about protecting natural features like valleys, stream corridors, and habitats while preserving the area’s wooded character and water quality. It emphasizes community open space and low-impact development techniques to keep the environment intact. That makes sense for a lot along the shores of Purdy Creek at Burley Lagoon. So while “NURBSENS” might look like a typo, it likely points to a zoning classification meant to safeguard natural resources.

A lot that’s complicated

And what’s up with that odd-shaped lot anyway? Since I’ve already led you away from town, through a mind-numbing tangle of stop-and-go commuter traffic aka State Route 302, and onto a gravel slope that’s quite possibly the back-alley equivalent of waterfronts, why not dig a little deeper into how such a curious piece of land came to be, shall we? After all, a real estate listing like this makes you pause and wonder, “What’s the catch?”

As it turns out, there is a least one small snag …  most of this lot is, um, underwater.

The Plat of Purdy, dated March 16, 1885, shows lot lines sporting different border styles that seem to give clues about the platted features. In Purdy, some of the lots have dotted lines — meaning they’re sometimes covered in water. I checked with local resident and retired land surveyor Clark Rowland to be sure. Clark volunteers at the Harbor History Museum’s Resource Room for research projects.

“My interpretation of the solid heavy lines is that they are an attempt to show where the top of a bank or the line of mean high tide was located at the time of the preparation of the plat map. The solid lot lines appear to me to be lot lines above the line of mean high tide. The dashed lot lines appear to show the portion of the lots covered by tides,” he said in an email to me.

Harbor History Museum copy of the Purdy Plat

Now, some of you may be thinking “I know what that lot is then! It’s a historic tidelands lot!” I also wondered that. And then I got excited because I’d never seen tidelands for sale before with my own two eyes. But, alas, I don’t think tidelands lots and underwater lots are the same, land-use wise.

Greg explained tidelands law to me once before, with info I think he got from Clark, since Clark knows all the cool technical stuff about land boundaries.

It went something like this:

When Washington became a state in 1889, it claimed ownership of all tidelands (land between the high and low tide marks) and shorelands (lands under navigable waters) for navigation, fishing, and recreation. Later, the state sold off some tidelands to private owners to encourage development, aquaculture, and economic growth.

As a result, the tidelands of today are a mix of private and public ownership, the latter of which is managed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources. The different ownerships make for some unique situations, like public beaches that are tough to reach without a boat. Often times, the beach is public but the land to park and walk to the beach on is through private property folks are not allowed to be on.

Greg found (or already knew) plenty of information about the Purdy plat and this specific lot. Read his side of the story (and some funny observations about our underwater lot) here.