Palatine weighs improvement plan for group home

After drawing some concern from the Palatine village council, an owner of a group home for women with special needs will return before the panel later this month seeking final permission to build a driveway that would make it easier for residents to enter vans and other vehicles.

St. Coletta of Wisconsin Inc. wants to construct a circular drive in front of the house on the 1100 block of South Vermont Street. To do so, it needs the village to approve a driveway 8 feet wider than the maximum 25 feet allowed under a village ordinance.

After a preliminary 3-3 committee vote on request this week, council members agreed to defer a final decision until June 17, giving St. Coletta time to alter its plan.

Palatine Councilman Tim Millar, who backed the proposal, suggested that adding landscaping around the drive could win over his dissenting colleagues.

Councilman Brad Helms, who didn't vote for St. Coletta's proposal, liked Millar's idea.

"I've always been against having the entire front of any home paved," Helms said.

Andrew Hancock, St. Coletta's Illinois director of regional operations, said seven women with special needs live in the licensed group home that's been operated by the company since 2002. He said the circular driveway would make it easier for the residents to get from the four-bedroom house into a St. Coletta's van or other transportation that serves them.

"We need these renovations made for the ladies to continue to call this their home," Hancock said.

Vermont Street residents Jim Kaziukewicz and Annie O'Donnell raised concern about septic field odors and other alleged problems at the group home, but village officials stressed the issue before them strictly was about the circular drive request.