Trucks kept backing into Chicago man's house. Now, City Hall is after him to repair the damage.
Cars pass by Robert Christie’s home in the 4800 block of West Ainslie Street on the Northwest Side. Trucks repeatedly have backed into his property and caused damage as they try to back away from a low underpass just south of his home. He wants City Hall to do more to protect his home, but he recently was cited by the city for failing to fix the damage the trucks had left. Now, he says, he’s considering selling.
Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times
Robert Christie has had enough.
The Chicago man lives in a beige-brick bungalow at North Cicero Avenue and West Ainslie Street on the Northwest Side — a house that for years has been a magnet for reversing semi-trucks whose drivers don't heed signs' warnings and realize too late they can't make it through a low-clearance bridge at Gunnison Street just south of his home.
In March, Christie, 55, got a letter from the city's Department of Buildings, citing him for failing to fix the buckled and smashed fences and shredded gutters the errant trucks have left him.
"What? He's the victim," Christie's next-door neighbor Bea Trigueros says when told of the letter.
She calls Christie a "very good neighbor."
And he loves his bungalow, which he's owned since 2003. Enough to stay there even though truckers keep accidentally backing into it — by one longtime neighbor's estimate, at least 200 times in 10 years — when they reverse to avoid the low underpass.
But maybe not any longer. Christie says he doesn't want to but finally might be ready to sell — "Not really, but if the price is right."
Christie says he spoke recently with Ald. James Gardiner (45th), in whose ward Christie’s house sits.
"He will try to negotiate a price for the house," Christie says.
Gardiner didn't respond to calls for comment on that.
The letter from the city, dated March 13, cites Christie for two violations concerning his fencing and his "roof eaves."
"The department considers such alleged violations as continuing on each succeeding day after the inspection date, until evidence has been brought to the department showing that such violations have been properly corrected," the letter says.
Christie has since repaired the roof and gutters and installed a new wooden fence. But he says he's wavering on replacing his costly metal fence along Cicero — the one that trucks keep crushing. He wants Gardiner to get City Hall to put up concrete barriers there instead.
He's asked city officials for help before about the trucks. Two years ago, the city installed “bump outs” on Ainslie — raised rectangles of concrete that narrow the road at Cicero — in the hope they might deter truck drivers from backing up on Christie’s street.
The agency also added and improved signs to warn truckers not to head south on Cicero if their trucks are taller than 13 feet, 2 inches, a City Hall spokeswoman says.
But none of that seems to have helped. Christie and his neighbors say truck drivers just back up over the bump outs and ignore the new signs, and cars run into each other now that the two-way street has been narrowed.
He installed security cameras to document who crashed into his property and has filed numerous lawsuits against companies that own the trucks that have hit his home, seeking compensation ranging from $2,500 to $7,300 for damage, with mixed results, saying in an interview last year: “I gain some. I lose some.”
Since his recent repairs, Christie says no one has backed into his house lately. But he figures it's just a matter of time until another truck does.
It nearly happened again this past week.
“It could happen because even last night a truck was out there," Christie says. “But it didn't turn [onto Ainslie]. It was there for a while, and then the police came" to help.