From Hyde Park to Lincoln Park, canines have been declared unwelcome in condominium developments.
But in a case involving one of Chicago’s best-known addresses, the John Hancock Center, a judge has now jumped to the defense of dog lovers who own condos.
In a lengthy opinion that takes judicial notice of the “cherished association” between dogs and master, Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Getty has declared the Hancock’s “no dogs” rule to be invalid.
“I am happy I could do my part,” said a Nancy Carlson, whose travails involving a 3-year-old bichon frise named Fred prompted Getty’s ruling.
Her attorney, Michael Brooks, said the Tuesday decision renders moot, some $30,000 in fines and fees Hancock’s condo board of directors said she owed for keeping a dog in her 69th-floor unit in violation of board rules that went into effect in January 1994.
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The case came to the court in a lien action filed by the condo board to collect the $30,000.
Carlson sold her condo last August, while the court battle was being carried out, and now lives with her husband, Benjamin Tessler and their two children in a house in Inverness.
It was there that she spent part of her day Wednesday taking congratulatory calls from friends and people she had never met who “called and thanked me for standing up for dogs.”
By challenging the manner in which the Hancock’s condominium board instituted the no-dog rule, the judge put similar boards in other buildings across Chicago on notice about what kind of restrictions they can put on condo owners and how such rules are imposed.
“This could have a significant effect for buildings that made rules on issues where their bylaws were silent,” said Robert Levin, vice president of Wolin-Levin Inc., which manages 130 condominium buildings, mainly on the North Side.
In his decision, Getty noted the 175 Delaware Place Homeowners Association, as the Hancock condo association is formally called, could have barred dogs by changing its bylaws with the endorsement of two-thirds of the owners.
Instead, the Hancock board of directors arbitrarily adopted its own rule against dogs. Getty said such boards have the power to act in such a manner only when acting in a “reasonable” manner, But in this case, he said, it was not.
The judge stayed his ruling until Wednesday at the request of attorneys for the condo association board to give them a chance to amend the bylaws with owner endorsement.
Abigail Spreyer, an attorney for the association, declined to comment on the decision. But in a letter sent Wednesday, Hancock condo owners were reminded that the no-dog rule remains in effect for at least another week.
The board maintained that a survey of residents in 1993 showed that 85 percent of those responding supported the policy and the board was just trying to abide by their wishes.
But the rule has also caused some other longtime residents to become former residents.
After living there 25 years as one of the Hancock’s original condo owners, Bernice Pink said she moved a few blocks away with her dog, Jake, when the board adopted the policy. She described Jake as a “purebred generic,” who is a member of Chenny Troope, an organization that uses dogs to help autistic children.
“I have seen damage to the Hancock that a dog could never do,” she said. “Dogs don’t destroy property the way a drunk will.”
“If they only know how many deals they lose a year because of the eccentricities of the condo board,” said real estate agent Glenn Southard. “All first-class buildings in the neighborhood allow dogs.”
That list, Southard said, includes such buildings as Water Tower Place, One Magnificent Mile and Lake Point Tower.
But another rationale for barring canines could be found in a study published last year by Roger Cannaday, an associate professor of finance at the University of Illinois.
His study compared the value of condominiums allowing dogs with those that don’t and purported to find that the dogless units were worth more.