Crystal Lake Denies Retroactive Permits For High School Bleachers
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The battle over the bleachers at Crystal Lake South High School raged on Wednesday night, nearly two years after they were built.
After a four-hour meeting on Wednesday, the Crystal Lake Planning & Zoning Commission unanimously refused to issue permits for the bleachers, which the school did not seek until after the structure went up.
"It's just a large wall of steel," said attorney Tom Burney, who represents Crystal Lake families who have sued Crystal Lake Community High School District 155 over the 37-foot high bleachers erected in July 2013.
Burney said the bleachers tower over nearby homes, making life miserable. Homeowners have argued the bleachers are too close to property lines, and too tall.
"It blocks their sunlight, it creates huge amounts of noise, destroys their privacy, because people can stand on top of the bleachers and look down," he said. "When it rains, it's just terrible noise. It has all of the negative impacts of a large structure like that, and its 365 days a year that this wall of steel is up. It's not just five or six times a year, when the football team's playing."
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The school district is under a court order to tear down the bleachers, but that's on hold, pending a ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court, which agreed in January to take up the case.
District 155 has argued it did not need to get local zoning approval to expand its existing bleachers, which are more than triple the width of the original ones, and five feet higher, at a cost of $1.2 million.
The plaintiffs have asked the high court to expedite oral arguments, so the future of what they call a "steel monstrosity" will be decided sooner.
Thus far, courts have sided with homeowners, and forced the district to go through the city's zoning process, but when the district had not done so by a court deadline, a McHenry County judge ordered the bleachers torn down.
