La Grange Park Denies Sprinkler Variance for Daycare

A request for a one-year variance in the sprinkler code was denied by the Board of Trustees at their regular meeting on Tuesday night.

The vote split the board with three trustees voting in favor of the request for a variance and two trustees voting no. Village President Jim Discipio voted no and the motion was denied. Trustees LaVelle Topps, Marshall Seeder and Susan Storcel voted yes with trustees Scott Mesick and Patricia Rocco voting no. Trustee Rimas Kozica was absent from the meeting.

The owner of the building at 1126-1130 Maple Ave.—the location the proposed day care facility would be held—and the facility's owners were in attendance at the meeting to appeal to the board for a year of additional time to get the building up to village code, which required a sprinkler system to be installed.

The space has been vacant for a number of years. Building owner Judy Ellison told board members she believed it would cost her and her husband about $25,000 to install the sprinkler system, which they planned to do. The variation requested was for a year, in which time the proposed tenant would see if their daycare facility would prove worthwhile to continue. Ellison also said it would allow her to recoup some expense for the sprinkler installation through rental payments, since she has been financially hurt by years of not having a tenant in the space, while maintaining the building.

Ellison added that the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) had already given them the OK to use the space as a daycare facility. DCFS does not require sprinkler systems, only that the building's alarm system be directly connected to the fire department, which the building was.

The proposed daycare facility would host up to 12 total children ranging from infants to toddlers. The ages of the children was a concern for board members, who worried that children so young would not be able to get out of the building on their own in the case of an emergency.

"This is a quandary," Storcel said. "This is difficult as I'm particularly concerned in this case because we have children who cannot walk. I'm having trouble with this one as well."

Ultimately trustees Strocel, Topps and Seeder said their concerns were mitigated by occupancy requirements that would have Village staff working closely with the daycare facility on evacuation procedures.

President Discipio said he did not feel good about granting the variance.

"We had this discussion awhile ago," Discipio said in reference to a three-year variance request granted by the board recently to The Children's House Montessori School. "At that time I had a knot in my stomach. I have a great concern with the children being in cribs."

Discipio said he also was concerned that due to requirements that the daycare facilities doors remain locked for safety reasons, that in an emergency, daycare staff might be locked out when they exited the building.

Ultimately, with Discipio's no vote, the request failed by a tied vote of 3-3.