## Facts

- Kenneth Salvatore owned one of three condominium units at 1950 North Howe Street in Chicago, Illinois.
- Michael and Marilyn Gelburd owned the adjoining unit in the same three-unit condominium building.
- Under the condominium declaration, the roof was designated a common element.
- Without obtaining prior written consent from the board, the Gelburds built a storage shed on the roof area above their unit.
- The Gelburds also installed a wooden railing and a stairway and used the shed’s roof as a sun deck.
- Salvatore complained that a table and chairs placed on the shed’s roof were blown by the wind and created loud noise and disturbance.
- The Gelburds agreed to remove the railing and the furniture and stopped using the shed roof as a deck.
- The condominium association’s board voted to ratify the shed’s construction on the condition that the Gelburds remove the stairway; the Gelburds complied.
- The association acknowledged that the Gelburds satisfied the board’s conditions for ratification.
- Salvatore sued, arguing the shed was a prohibited alteration of a common element and that the board lacked power under the declaration to ratify it after the fact.

## Issues

1. Whether, under the condominium declaration, the board’s power to ratify unauthorized “additions, alterations or improvements” made without prior written consent applied to work affecting common elements (the roof), or only to work inside a unit.

## Decision

- The Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, affirmed the judgment in favor of the Gelburds.
- The court held that, reading the declaration as a whole, the board had authority to ratify the shed built on the common-element roof.
- The court upheld the board’s conditional ratification requiring removal of the stairway (and recognizing that the Gelburds had already removed the deck-related features that caused the noise complaints).

## Legal Principles

- A condominium declaration is interpreted as a whole, with provisions read in relation to each other rather than in isolation.
- When a declaration requires prior written consent for additions, alterations, or improvements to both common elements and units, and also states that the board may ratify unauthorized work and impose conditions it could have required for consent, the ratification power may apply to changes involving common elements.
- Courts will not adopt a rigid, technical grammatical reading of a single clause when the declaration’s overall structure assigns the board broad managerial power over common elements.
- Where the board acts within powers granted by the declaration—such as by approving an otherwise unauthorized improvement subject to conditions—courts generally uphold that decision absent a clear conflict with the declaration.

## Conclusion

Salvatore v. Gelburd held that the condominium board, under the declaration’s consent-and-ratification provisions and its broader management powers, could ratify an owner’s unauthorized construction of a shed on a common-element roof, and could do so subject to conditions intended to address the impact on other owners; the appellate court therefore affirmed judgment for the unit owners who built the shed.


Salvatore v. Gelburd, 565 N.E. 2d 204 (1990)