ESTERO, Fla. — In a quiet residential neighborhood, not far from Estero High School, a large, yellow, detached garage stands out and towers above all other buildings.
Nothing else looks like it.
In fact, it’s so out of place that last summer a Lee County judge ordered the building either be demolished or reduced in size significantly.
“Best way I can describe it; it’s a commercial building on a residential lot,” said Shane Reilly, who lives in the property next to the garage.
“It has commercial grade garage doors. It has commercial grade electricity going to it. It’s a commercial building on a residential lot.”
For Reilly and his wife, the last four years have been full of legal and neighborly battles.
“It’s been a long road and a long process,” Reilly said. It’s been a financial burden on our family.”
The story starts in August of 2021, when Estero resident Daniel Duke applied for a permit to build a detached garage on his property.
The next month, the Village of Estero denied the permit.
A staffer cited the village’s Land Development Code which states the “area of a garage as an accessory use to a dwelling may not exceed the area of the first floor of the dwelling.”
Because the existing home on the property is 1,747 square feet, according to planning documents, and an existing detached garage stands at 784 square feet, the staffer wrote in the denial “that a second detached garage cannot exceed 963 square feet in size.”
The detached garage is 2,304 square feet.
The Reilly’s thought the story would end there.
But by September of 2022 the permit was approved, and the garage was erected.
“It’s disturbing and troubling that we’re in this decision because the Village of Estero wouldn’t follow their own laws,” Reilly said.
Reilly says along with being an eyesore, the building is also causing problems for his property.
"Our yard never flooded before the garage was built," said Reilly.
Fox 4 Investigates asked the Village of Estero why staffers approved the permit after first issuing a denial.
Because of an ongoing civil lawsuit, a spokesperson for Estero wouldn’t comment.
Duke never responded to Fox 4.
In a December 2022 letter obtained by Fox 4, Robert Pritt, the former Interim Village Attorney, wrote that because there were no size limits when Duke first purchased the property, he was issued a permit under the preexisting regulations, not the current code.
“A well-recognized exception is where the regulation changes and the person can show reasonable reliance on the preexisting zoning, including expenditure of time and/or money. In this case, the preexisting zoning regulations did not limit the size of garages,” Pritt wrote to village officials.
Fast forward to the summer of 2024, and Lee County Judge Michael McHugh disagreed and called the garage an “illegal structure.”
Duke was ordered to either obtain a building permit to bring the detached garage into compliance which would require reducing the size of the building significantly, or demolish the garage.
“Your taxpayer dollars here are going towards legal fees and administrative fees to fight a standing illegal building in the state of Florida that should have never been here,” said Reilly.
The latest status report filed in court shows Duke has obtained a permit to reduce the size of the garage.
His lawyer wrote to the judge that Duke is “diligently pursuing construction efforts to comply with the Court’s Orders.”
No work has started.
