A longtime Elgin hair salon has cleared a major hurdle in its quest to add a bar and video gambling terminals for customers waiting on haircuts, after the city council unanimously approved a parking variation that had been rejected months earlier by the city’s own zoning board. Casa de Estilos, operating at 301 Dundee Ave. since 1988, sought the variation to convert part of its building into a bar with six video gambling terminals intended strictly as an amenity for salon customers.
The council’s vote reverses a July decision by the Elgin Planning and Zoning Commission, which rejected the parking variation in a 4-3 vote despite city staff recommending approval, according to the Chicago Tribune. City staff had determined that the salon’s application met all eight applicable zoning requirements and standards, a split that set up the appeal heard by the full council on October 14. The petition, filed as Petition 28-26, sought an off-street parking variation necessary to establish a Drinking Place Use classification inside the existing salon, according to official City of Elgin council records.
A Parking Fight Over an 18-Spot Need
At the heart of the dispute was Elgin’s zoning code, which requires 30 parking spaces for any business that includes a bar. Casa de Estilos has just 14 spaces in its own lot plus nine nearby on-street spaces, well short of that threshold. Owner Oscar Zamudio submitted a parking analysis estimating peak demand would never exceed 18 spaces, even on the salon’s busiest late Friday afternoons, per the same Tribune account.
Elgin Community Development Director Marc Mylott told the council the salon wanted the added amenities to distinguish itself from competing shops, and that the bar would only operate during salon hours and carry no exterior signage. That detail lines up with Illinois law: Section 18 of the Illinois Video Gaming Act bars licensed establishments from displaying exterior physical gaming signs or off-premises billboards unless permanently affixed to the building.
No Football Games, No Hard Liquor
Zamudio told the council the proposed bar would pour a small selection of beer, wine and coffee drinks, but no hard liquor, and that it likely would not draw anyone beyond existing salon customers. Casa de Estilos is open seven days a week and takes appointments from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. most days. Zamudio said the bar might not even serve beer during the day and would not be a place where someone sits down to watch a three-hour football game…