Joe and Marie Adcock have extensively upgraded their house on a hilltop in the 12300 block of Seminole Road in Palos Park since moving there in 2009.
There’s just one thing they say remains unfinished — a shed at the side of their home that’s sat under construction since September 2014, stuck in limbo amid a dispute with the village over building permits and zoning rules.
More Top Picks Futons
Last month, the Adcocks turned to the courts, filing a request for an administrative review and seeking a reversal of a decision by the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals not to grant the couple a zoning variance that would let them keep a modified version of the shed on their property. They called the ZBA ruling “arbitrary, capricious and against the manifest weight of the evidence,” according to the lawsuit.
Problems began when the couple decided to rebuild the roughly 15-foot-high shed beside their house to store landscaping tools. Joe Adcock, 37, said water running downhill through the shed left it dilapidated and dangerously close to falling down.
But they never sought permits for demolishing the shed or rebuilding it. The village ordered them to halt construction in September after a building inspector, checking on concrete work the Adcocks were doing without a permit, noticed the new foundation for the rebuilt shed, Joe Adcock said.
He said he was unaware that the permits were necessary. When they attempted to belatedly get the permits and continue construction, they were told the structure, which was on the property line, violated village code and needed to be moved or torn down, Adcock said.
He contends that the rebuilt shed occupies the same footprint as the previous one — built before code changes requiring that it be farther from the property line — and ought to be considered the same structure.
Village Manager Rick Boehm declined to comment on the lawsuit.
But at an April ZBA meeting, Assistant Village Attorney Jacob Karaca said demolishing and rebuilding the shed made it a new building, no longer grandfathered in so it could be along the property’s edge. And Karaca claimed that the Adcocks were attempting to seek retroactive permission after disregarding village regulations, according to the record of that meeting.
Adcock admits that he and his wife failed to get the proper permits but argues that it was a simple mistake and the village has put up nothing but roadblocks since they’ve tried to fix the problem.
“We’re looking for them to be flexible and work with us,” he said.
The Adcocks said they applied to appear before the ZBA multiple times, seeking belated permission for the shed project, but were denied. So was their request to build a smaller shed that would sit six feet from the property line, closer to the minimum 15 feet that village code requires, Adcock said.
The ZBA in April voted unanimously to reject the smaller shed. ZBA Chairman David Lencioni said he found the logic of constructing an “illegal” building and then asking permission “peculiar and hard to understand,” according to the meeting minutes.
The Adcocks say they’ve likely spent more trying to reverse the village’s decision than the shed is worth, though they declined to provide a figure.
“It’s almost embarrassing to even talk about it because it’s a shed. But it’s the principle,” Marie Adcock said.
She said she just wants to get the issue resolved. But her husband said he wants Palos Park to make its code easier to understand and to enforce it consistently, claiming that some homeowners get zoning waivers while others are denied.
“If they’re going to apply it across the board, that’s fine. They don’t, and it seems unequal,” Joe Adcock said.
While the lawsuit works its way through the courts, Adcock said he plans to be on the lookout for what he believes to be unenforced violations around town so he can question them at upcoming village meetings.
“I’m not going away,” he said.
Twitter @laurenzumbach
More Top Picks Best White Noise Machines For Tinnitus