Waiting on a sign from City Hall

June Casagrande

Some are big, some are small. Some are high, some are low. Some are

loud, some are muted. They’re on poles, in roofs, on windows, on

walls and standing alone.

Is it possible to make business signs in the city a little more

consistent or at least a little easier on the eyes? That’s what city

officials want to find out.

On Feb. 26, the city will hold a public workshop to talk about

possibly changing the city’s sign code.

“We want to know from the community what kinds of signs are up

that they like, what things bother them,” Assistant City Manager

Sharon Wood said.

The workshop is the long-awaited product of a similar move on the

Balboa Peninsula, where three years ago the city enacted new sign

regulations. Wood said that the rules were especially needed on the

peninsula, where handwritten and other trashy-looking signs brought

down the look of some neighborhoods.

“We had signs that were of poor quality, we had stuff that was

hand-painted plywood,” Wood said. “Sometimes, it was just big pieces

of paper in store windows with writing on them.”

As they did on the peninsula, city leaders will consider creating

a set of design guidelines to govern the look of signs. They will

also consider forbidding signs on poles and on roofs for businesses

that also have signs on the ground.

But the final rules won’t be hard and fast: The city will likely

add a “creative sign” exception -- any business that believes that it

can break the rules while at the same time creating an attractive

alternative will get the chance to make their case to the city.

The rules will likely vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, Wood

said, to complement the look of an area and to help business owners

communicate with passersby. For example, signs along Mariners Mile

have to reach fast-moving drivers on Coast Highway, unlike Balboa

Island businesses, which target mostly pedestrians.

“The idea of a sign code is to get some consistency,” City

Councilman Steve Bromberg said. “The idea is to make signs more

aesthetically pleasing and also more helpful to the user.”