Schaumburg continues to debate maximum garage size

More than 52 years after incorporation, Schaumburg's quest to find the right maximum sizes for backyard garages and storage sheds continued Thursday.

An intensive year of soul-searching ended with the planning, building and development committee's turnabout from last month to agree more with residents at its evening meeting than with staff's recommendation.

The committee's two present members voted to recommend detached garages be no more than 600 square feet and 15 feet tall, and that storage sheds be no more than 200 square feet.

Trustee George Dunham, a third committee member not at the meeting, said he'd possibly have concurred with his colleagues on that recommendation if he'd been there.

But a month ago, when it was Trustee Tom Dailly who was absent, the committee seemed to be leaning more toward staff's recommendation to make maximum garage sizes vary from lot to lot -- occupying no more than 25 percent of a backyard.

Only a year ago, village officials increased the maximum size of detached garages to 650 square feet. But they changed their minds right after someone built one that big and incurred the wrath of his neighbors.

"The ordinance we have in place is not working because it's causing too many problems, and we need to address it," Dailly said Thursday.

But resident Peter Linkevich said the sizes the village was contemplating threatened his own hopes of building a three-car garage.

"These neighbors are starting to have too much say over what everybody does," Linkevich said.

Dailly agreed that property owners should have certain rights over their own land, but that expectations of life in the suburbs often include plenty of green space in everyone's backyard.

"I'm concerned that we're going to have a lot of that green space disappear and be more like an inner city backyard, where it's like a postage stamp," Dailly said.

The 600-square-foot garage size was settled on as a reasonable compromise, though some smaller lots might be further limited by an existing law that backyard structures not total more than 40 percent of the yard.

The new proposed shed size is an increase from the 150 square feet now allowed.

The village board will vote May 13 on these changes, which don't affect existing garages.