VILLA PARK : Residents Still Fighting Mansion

A man who wants to build a mansion that would be almost 7,000 square feet and would have two two-car garages, a cabana, a billiard room and a pool on an estate-sized lot has his neighbors rankled even though they too have homes worth millions of dollars.

Thomas Q. Nicholson has been trying for a year to build his four-bedroom home on his 29,000-square-foot lot.

But his neighbors don’t want one of the garages--the detached one--to be too close to the front property line, and they don’t him to build tennis courts.

Nicholson wants to build one of the garages 30 feet from his property line. That requires City Council approval.

Neighbors fear that Nicholson, who last year proposed to build two tennis courts on his property, is planning to build the courts in the back yard of his two-story custom stucco house.

Nicholson has already changed plans for his home once, following neighbors’ complaints that the windows of the home would afford a direct view of their properties, invading their privacy. He revised the plans so the home would have smaller windows facing his estate, which includes a 10,000-square-foot back yard.

Nicholson also dropped plans for tennis courts after residents in the area last year opposed the plan because the lighting would brighten their normally dark neighborhood. The city does not allow street lights.

Residents told the City Council recently they are afraid Nicholson will eventually build tennis courts in his large back yard. Nicholson did not tell the City Council whether he would.

Last year, residents complained that Nicholson’s proposed tennis courts, with 400-watt lights on 22-foot-high fixtures, would illuminate the neighborhood.

At last month’s council meeting, area resident Charles Davis asked the City Council to postpone voting on Nicholson’s request until neighbors study the new plan for the house. “This is a controversial issue,” Davis said. “This is not something that should be an automatically rubber-stamped project.”

But Nicholson told the City Council: “I’ve bent over backward to redesign this house. . . . I don’t think (the house) is anything out of the ordinary.”

Nicholson, president of Nicholson Land Co. Inc., said he would talk to his neighbors about his plan. The council is expected to make a decision April 26.