Itasca re-examines garage door codes

Itasca village officials may crack down on future garage sizes and types, but there's still more talks to come before a final decision is made.

At Tuesday night's committee of the whole meeting, board members reviewed the plan commission's unanimous recommendation to limit residential garage doors to 9-feet and prohibit roll-up garage doors.

Trustee Ron Putzell said recently, somebody built a garage that met the village's codes. However, the structure looks like a truck garage.

"It just looked terrible, so the plan commission decided to look at (the ordinance) to get it more in line with residential areas," he said.

However, Trustees Jeff Pruyn, Mike Latoria and Jeff Aiani disagreed with prohibiting some small roll-up garages and encouraged the discussion to continue next week.

"If we don't like the way (garages) look, I'd rather see us go through an architectural review board," Aiani said. "I think right now I would kind of like to discuss it more."

Putzell said there are so many codes within the village's books that haven't been reviewed for 25 or 50 years. And until something like this happens, he said, the codes aren't reviewed.

"You don't want to limit what a person can do to their house, but you want so make sure it blends into the neighborhood," he said. "So this is just like housekeeping."

Itasca Village Board members are expected to continue the discussion about the garage ordinance at next weeks board meeting, at 7 p.m. at 550 West Irving Park Road.

A front porch code also could be looked into in the near future because of similar issues, Putzell said.