With an eye on its past and its future, Riverside has moved to lessen the visual impact of newly constructed garages in the village. A new ordinance approved by the village board March 20 encourages residents building new garages to build detached garages rather than attached, street-facing garages while reducing the visual impact of attached garages from the street.
The action followed concerns raised several years ago by a state preservation official about the number of teardowns in Riverside and the impact of multi-car garages and wider driveways on the character of the village.
Trustees voted to approve text amendments to the village code, which require new attached, street-facing garages to be set back by at least five feet from the front facade of a single-family home and incentivize the construction of detached garages behind new homes instead by allowing extra building coverage.
The amendments also limit the width of garage doors that are visible from the street to nine feet, meaning two-car garages that can be seen would have to have two doors rather than a combined door longer than nine feet.
Additionally, all new garages in Riverside will have to match the style of the home they belong to with the same or similar materials, roof angles and colors.
Village Planner Anne Cyran said the amendments originated with a visit from the State Historic Preservation Office to Riverside in 2017. She misstated at a meeting in February that the comments came from a member of the state historic preservation commission.
“SHPO staff expressed concerns about the number of demolitions in the village and the number of new houses with front-loaded, attached garages with wide curb cuts, which they felt were out of character for Riverside,” she said. “This type of development creates more pavement in front yards, and they give vehicles and vehicle storage more visual prominence in the street.”
She clarified that Riverside’s national historic landmark status, which SHPO staff said could be threatened by “the cumulative effect” of continued garage-centric development, is regulated by the National Park Service rather than SHPO.
Cyran told trustees the concerns arose after Riverside saw six homes demolished and seven new front-loaded garages built in 2015. After 2016 and 2017, which each saw three demolitions and two new front-loaded garages, two or fewer homes have been demolished each year in Riverside, and no new front-loaded garages have been built, she said.
At the meeting, members of the village board praised Cyran for her diligence in finding specific information about how and why the initial concerns, which trustees discussed in February, came about.
“You literally found the exact individual who spoke with us eight years ago. I want to reiterate my fervent belief that we have the best staff in the state,” Trustee Megan Claucherty said. “I appreciate [your] going another level deeper to understand that the comments were made by a different governing body and really seeing it all the way through and then fully presenting the comprehensive 10 years’ of data showing the trend.”
