A McHenry County judge has handed Pistakee Yacht Club a win in its long-running standoff with the Village of Johnsburg, ruling that the club can continue parking members' sailboats on its backlot during the sailing season. The catch: from November through April, those boats have to go, unless the club builds a storage building to house them.
Judge Kevin Costello issued the ruling after a four-day bench trial capping nearly three years of legal wrangling between the club and the village, according to shawlocal.com. The judge also prohibited Johnsburg from charging the club cumulative fines for boats left on the backlot, the outlet reports. Boats must be cleared from that lot by November 1 each year or the village can fine the club for every day they remain.
Central to Costello's decision was a 1970 McHenry County variance that the club has long argued gives it the right to park and store members' boats on the backlot. The ruling restores that variance, per the same account. The club can still store boats through the winter on its original lakeside property, just not on the backlot in the colder months.
A Fight Rooted in a Decades-Old Variance
The dispute traces back to that 1970 variance, which the yacht club's attorneys said Johnsburg recognized for decades — until it was stripped from village zoning maps in 2024, according to an earlier shawlocal.com report. Johnsburg's village manager countered that nothing in the village's zoning ordinance, or in McHenry County's zoning laws, allowed outdoor storage of boats owned by anyone other than the property owner. The report notes the yacht club property was among 1,600 unincorporated parcels annexed into Sunnyside in November 1991; Sunnyside later became Johnsburg.
The club, founded by Chicago businessmen in 1897, has held sailboat races and regattas on Pistakee Bay and Pistakee Lake for more than 125 years, according to the Chicago Tribune. That history became a backdrop for a bitter fight over money as much as zoning: the club says the litigation has cost it more than $170,000, while the village has cited far smaller figures at different points, including about $2,000 after roughly a year and a half of the dispute, the Tribune reports.
Years of Dismissed Complaints
The legal back-and-forth stretches back to fall 2023, when the club filed its first complaint against the village, according to a club-issued update posted to Constant Contact. A second complaint filed in August 2024 was dismissed that December, the update says, and a third complaint filed in January 2025 was dismissed the following May. A counterclaim filed by the club in November 2025 was also dismissed, in March 2026, per the same source.
The village has said it made efforts over more than three years to resolve the matter collaboratively, including a proposed 2024 settlement tied to property maintenance and landscaping, according to mchenrytimes.com. Whether the club moves forward with building a winter storage facility, and how the village plans to enforce the November 1 deadline going forward, remains to be seen.
FOX 32 Chicago described the outcome as the end of a legal fight that had dragged on for nearly three years between Johnsburg and the club. For now, the ruling gives Pistakee Yacht Club members clearance to keep their sailboats on the backlot through the warm months, with the club's winter storage plans still an open question.
