When faced with choosing between one of its most influential advisors and one of its most important landowners, the Long Grove Village Board sided with its advisors.
Homeowner Marsha Forsythe said she will still build the addition she wants, but it will be detached from her house — and connected by an underground tunnel.
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Forsythe owns and is moving into a house on the 3100 block of Old McHenry Road, and had sought an amendment to the village’s code that would allow her to build onto her new property.
At the Village Board’s Feb. 23 meeting, the trustees paid heed to the warning from its planning commission, which cautioned them about the opportunities such an amendment would give to other residents.
Forsythe and her family own other houses around Long Grove, but they are one of the major landlords of the downtown area as well. After the Village Board’s decision, she said she would make the addition anyway, because what she is seeking is already allowed under the rules of detached structures.
“The town is not progressive,” Forsythe said. “It’s going to look like a barn. But, I still will build it, exactly as I want.”
During the meeting, though, the trustees and some audience members discussed the further applications that the next homeowner could use such an amendment for.
“Think about the gravity of what you’re going to do,” former Village President Tony Dean told them. “Homeowners have always wanted to break our zoning. You do that by spot-zoning, or the appearance of spot-zoning. Then, someone else will claim that as a precedent.”
For decades, Long Grove has held strict limits on home sizes, governed by lot sizes. The largest houses that the village permits can be 13,000 square feet, but those must be on properties of three acres or more. Forsythe’s new residence stands on 10 acres, and is at the square footage limit.
But both she and Long Grove officials noted that the village’s system of measuring includes garages, attics and covered patios. Forsythe said her property assessment listed her “livable space” at only 7,900 square feet, mostly because of the large attic and the patio.
“I don’t live in my garage, but it’s counted as living space,” she said to the trustees during the meeting.
But to amend the village’s code would mean that other owners of three acres or more could make enlargements, as well.
But he added that, in his 19 years in elected and appointed offices for Long Grove, he never saw the trustees reverse a decision made by their planning commission. Trustee Lori Lyman — one of the two board members who voted in favor of Forsythe’s request — said groups that went unchallenged resulted in laws that became outdated.
“The comment about the 19 years does concern me, that there’s been no change,” Lyman said. “I think it’s time for a change.”
But four other trustees did not, and Long Grove’s square-footage limits remain in place.
After the meeting, Forsythe and her architect, Paul Psenka, said they would have to go to their work-around: build the same addition as a detached structure, 20 feet away from the existing house. She lamented that the roof will have to be a bit lower, but other than that, the design already met the village’s code, and needed only a building permit.
She said she will connect the two with an underground tunnel, basement-to-basement.
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