The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About2002-05-06 Minutes• • • MINUTES OF A MEETING OF THE BOARD OF SIGN APPEALS A regular meeting of the Board of Adjustment was held on Monday, May 6, 2002 at 4:15 p.m. in Room 326 of the City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain, Fayetteville, Arkansas. ITEMS CONSIDERED SNA 02-2.00: Sign Appeal (St. Paul's Episcopal Church, pp 484) Page 2 MEMBERS PRESENT Marion Orton James Kunzelmann Joanne Olszewski Michael Green Bob Nickle ACTION TAKEN Approved MEMBERS ABSENT Michael Andrews STAFF PRESENT STAFF ABSENT Dawn Warrick David Whitaker Mike McKimmey Renee Thomas • ROLL CALL: Upon the completion of roll call, there were five members present with Mr. Andrews being absent. • • SNA 02-2.00: Sign Appeal (St. Paul's Episcopal Church, pp 484) was submitted by James Foster of Amirmoez Foster Hailey Johnson on behalf of St. Paul's Episcopal Church for property located at 224 N. East Avenue. The property is zoned R -O, Residential Office and contains approximately 2.0 acres. The request is for one 34 sq.ft. sign (a 18 sq.ft. variance) and one additional 34 sq.ft sign. Green: The first item on the agenda for the Board of Sign Appeals is SNA 02-2.00, a sign appeal by St. Paul's Episcopal Church submitted by James Foster of Amirmoez Foster Hailey Johnson on behalf of St. Paul's Episcopal Church for property located at 224 N. East Avenue. The property is zoned R -O, Residential Office and contains approximately 2.0 acres. The request is for one 34 sq.ft. sign (an 18 sq.ft. variance) and one additional 34 sq.ft sign. Since my firm has been involved in this project, I will recuse myself from any discussion and voting on this. Mike, can you bring the Commission up to speed on this? McKimmey: I am glad to see all of you, glad to see Mr. Green back and Mr. Nickle. Welcome. This is a variance in an R -O zoning district, which the sign ordinance treats very restrictively. The request is actually for three signs. There is a 16 sq.ft. sign, which I can approve. That will be the north facing sign and then there are two 34 sq.ft. signs being requested, one looking east and one looking west. Both of them have significant setback from any visual presence near the street. I recommend approval based upon the unique circumstances. The request is for variances from the literal provisions of Chapter 174 for the erection of a new sign. In instances where strict enforcement would cause difficulties due to circumstances unique to the individual sign under consideration and grant such variance only when it is demonstrated that such actions shall be in keeping with the spirit and intent of Chapter 174. My recommendation for approval is based upon the scale issue once again, that the zoning ordinance, the zoning district R -O seems to have an awful lot of large scale projects located in it for which the signage is out of scale. I would recommend for these signs. The variance request will be for one sign, an additional 18 sq.ft. on one sign and a variance for an additional sign. The ordinance gives two 16 sq.ft. signs in a case like this. They would like to have three signs. That would require an additional 16sq.ft. sign with a variance for another 18 sq.ft. If you will note in the letter, they do address some of the needs of the area, some of the visual architecture of the area, their distances from College Avenue and East Street are quite a bit and so their angle of view and perceived impact of the signs are really quite modest even though they are oversized. I have a drawing on the board for you to take a look at and to help you in your determination. Behind that I have a plan of the building, which if you care to see it we can unclip that front drawing and we can see the position. I would be happy to do that for you. This is the Dickson Street frontage. The sign that they are asking for a variance for here is 34 sq.ft. sign, it is back here in this alcove entrance. The other sign is here, which addresses the alley and the Board of Sign Appeals • May 6, 2002 Page 3 parking lot next door to the Bassett Law Firm. You are probably aware of how far that is from anybody's view. These are the two signs in question. This sign here I can write a permit for with no variance required. Nickle: Where is the west elevation sign going to go there? McKimmey: In that light colored alcove between the addition and the existing structure. Green: Jim Foster is here, would you have anything to add to that Jim? Foster: I don't want to take your time with a presentation unless you would like me to. I did not have the color picked out when we first submitted this and if I could just explain since that has some bearing on how much it stands out. Father Grisham is here with me. He wanted to go with a dark color but we have gone with a bone color, which is an off-white. It is the same color that we have on the sign that is at the comer of East and Dickson Street. I will be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Green: Are there any questions? • Kunzelmann: Will the letters be affixed directly to the building or is there a backing? Foster: It is directly to the building. Grisham: That building is the welcome center so our intention is to draw people who are coming either from the parking lot or from East Street into that entrance, which will orient them. Orton: That is the reason for that sign. The one off the parking lot is there above the second. I thought hmmm, there is all that space on the rest of the building, but then that would direct them into the wrong part. Foster: Yes, we are trying to draw them to the new entry. Grisham: It is hard to get Episcopalians to change when they are used to doing it another way. Green: Are there any other questions? Motion: Orton: I move that we grant the variance as requested. • Nickle: I will second that. Board of Sign Appeals • May 6, 2002 Page 4 • • Green: Roll Call: Green: Nickle: Wamck: Whittaker: Nickle: We have a motion and a second to approve the application. Is there any further discussion? Can you please call the roll? Upon the completion of roll call the motion to approve SNA 02-2.00 was approved by a vote of 4-0-1 with Mr. Green abstaining. The motion passes. Thank you. Is there any other new business that should come before this body? Would it be appropriate addressing what you were talking about with the developer? I can't say the developer was right or wrong on that Foster we were talking about on that subdivision. Would it be appropriate for staff to write him a letter saying "We did this but it's apparent you are not communicating your easement information to buyers, please do this in the future." He could throw it in the trashcan obviously, but I think that could help address some of the issues that you brought up which were very good. We could just put him on notice. I will be glad to. If the Board directs me to write a letter I will be glad to. It is not unusual that Planning sends out advisory letters like that asking for cooperation and to try to prevent this kind of difficult situation from coming up again. Regardless of anything else, you have to feel for people who find themselves in that situation. Just something like that I think would help. Olszewski: The same thing happened with that shed that time and you wrote the letters. Warrick: I sent the letters. Whittaker: We can't go into too much discussion on that because that is ongoing litigation. Olszewski• Whittaker: Olszewski: Warrick: I did appreciate you writing those letters. We are set for trial in late November so there will be more updates later as it progresses. We do have an issue with education. It is very difficult. Staff sees these projects, we work with the developers from the time that it is a concept until the time that it is final. I am sure that there is a lot of Board of Sign Appeals • May 6, 2002 Page 5 • • assumption that people understand where things are and what is happening. Many times we get caught up in the fact that this is our day to day and people purchasing lots don't deal with this on an everyday basis. This is not familiar terminology for them so it does put them at a disadvantage. We encourage everyone of course, to educate themselves as to the process that they are going through and to the information that they need in order to make informed decisions and we help in any way that we can. With this letter to this developer, or any other developer who is working on preliminary plats, I will be glad to put something together to help with that process and see if it does assist some of those lot buyers. Whittaker: As a warning to people who are thinking about buying property, it is a big gamble to agree to buy property before the plat is approved. As Dawn said earlier, it is a blank slate until it is recorded in a courthouse, anything could happen. You could suddenly find the lot is completely turned around. It is just a big gamble to buy before the Plat has been recorded. McKimmey: I was going to make a comment as to something about the haste that the citizens went through the process, that was the problem. The hastiness of the whole issue. They were ready to buy, they had already started design work and then they went up to the courthouse to make a transaction and so the hastiness of the process really was the issue here. It probably will come up again in my estimation just because how many of them did they sale that day. Green: Is it the wish of this Board to have Dawn draft a letter to send to this developer or others? Warrick: What I will propose is that I send it to this developer independently because it does reflect this particular case but I will attach it to all of our preliminary plat applications as a general advisory letter to those filing for preliminary plat. Green: Is there any other business? We are adjourned.