Businesses responding to sign ordinance headaches

Matt Echel­berry

Inquirer Reporter

The Galion Plan­ning and Zon­ing Com­mit­tee held a spe­cial meet­ing on July 6 in Coun­cil Cham­bers to dis­cuss the city’s sign ordi­nance. It was part of an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about chang­ing some aspects of the ordi­nance in order to make it more busi­ness friendly. Dr. Thomas Fell­ner serves as the chair­man for the com­mit­tee and called the meet­ing because at the last City Coun­cil meet­ing, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Taco Bell requested that Coun­cil work quickly to change the ordi­nance so that a new Taco Bell restau­rant can be built at the Galion location.

Along with Fell­ner, com­mit­tee mem­bers Ken Bod­kins and Gail Baldinger were present on Fri­day to con­tinue the dis­cus­sion. Fell­ner asked Joe Klein-knecht to attend as well to offer his input. Kleinknecht is the pres­i­dent and CEO of the Galion Cham­ber of Com­merce and has been work­ing with a com­mit­tee of local busi­ness own­ers to dis­cuss the sign ordi­nance and offer their rec­om­men­da­tions to the Plan­ning and Zon­ing Com­mis­sion. He said, “The cur­rent ordi­nance did not seem all that busi­ness friendly.” Over­all, he believes it should be cut down in order to be made sim­pler and eas­ier to navigate.

The new ordi­nance was enacted in Jan­u­ary of 2010 and has since been cre­at­ing some con­fu­sion and dif­fi­culty between busi­nesses and City Zon­ing Inspec­tor Matt Ross, ironic con­sid­er­ing that it was intended to do just the opposite.

Fell­ner explained that the com­mit­tee was work­ing to fix the ordi­nance. “We’re not bend­ing to the will of any indi­vid­ual busi­ness. Our inten­tion is to set a rea­son­able pol­icy for all busi­nesses,” Fell­ner said.

Fell­ner also requested George Ken­tris, the Taco Bell rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Find­lay that approached Coun­cil, to attend the meet­ing that morn­ing to explain in more detail what dif­fi­cul­ties his com­pany was run­ning up against.

Ken­tris obliged, stat­ing that he has spent 30 years in the Taco Bell busi­ness and has also been a prac­tic­ing attor­ney for 35 years. He owns 37 Taco Bell restau­rants through­out north­west Ohio and the Colum­bus area. In his expe­ri­ence, this was the first time he ever had to approach a zon­ing review board to build a new restaurant.

The com­pany applied for a build­ing per­mit last Decem­ber to con­struct a new restau­rant at the site of the cur­rent Galion Taco Bell. In the orig­i­nal design, the min­i­mum require­ments were not met for park­ing spaces and amount of cars that can be “stacked” in the drive-thru lane. Ken­tris said that the com­pany was then denied a vari­ance by the city’s zon­ing board, which he described as “very unreceptive.”

His team spoke with Ross and then went back to the draw­ing board to design a dif­fer­ent restau­rant that would be 300–400 square feet smaller in order to meet the park­ing space and drive-thru stack require­ments. It dis­cussed this new plan with Ross, who said that although all of the zon­ing require­ments were accept­able, the sign pack­age would not pass.

It was at that point that Ken­tris said he approached City Coun­cil to work on the sign ordi­nance because that was the only thing pre­vent­ing the project from start­ing. He said that he would like to start the rebuild in mid-September to have it com­pleted by year’s end. “The improve­ment to the prop­erty would be sig­nif­i­cant,” he added.

Bod­kins asked, “What is the total square footage of the sig­nage cur­rently on the Taco Bell build­ing and what’s the dif­fer­ence in that amount to the new design?” Ken­tris explained that the total sig­nage pack­age would be 225 square feet total. The menu board is about 4 square feet big­ger and the build­ing sig­nage is 50 square feet more than that of the exist­ing build­ing. Once com­pleted, the restau­rant will look the same as the Bucyrus store except five feet narrower.

Fell­ner then asked Ross what the sig­nage allow-ances for other fast food restau­rants in Galion were. “Most gen­eral com­mer­cial busi­nesses max out at 100 square feet,” Ross said. How­ever, most of the exist­ing restau­rants are not in com­pli­ance with the new ordi­nance because they were built before it went into effect.

Bod­kins did not think Taco Bell should be held back any fur­ther if they meet all other require­ments. He said it should be able to move for­ward with con­struc­tion while the sign ordi­nance gets straight­ened out.

Ross sug­gested strik­ing the final sen­tence from the drive-thru sec­tion of the ordi­nance. In Chap­ter 1181, under sec­tion 08-J-12, in note 3 of the chart: “In eval­u­at­ing such site plan, the Plan­ning and Zon­ing Com­mis­sion shall uti­lize the stan­dards of this Chap­ter. ” (See box for the com­plete lan­guage in that section.)

The com­mit­tee decided that it will bring a motion to the Coun­cil to strike the sen­tence under his rec­om­men­da­tion. The issue will be dis­cussed at the next City Coun­cil meet­ing (July 10).

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From Chap­ter 1181 of the Sign Ordinance:

In all dis­tricts where so per­mit­ted, uses hav­ing drive-through facil­i­ties shall sub­mit a spe­cific site plan for sig­nage, show­ing the type, size and loca­tion of all per­ma­nent signs, includ­ing direc­tional signs and menu boards. Such site plan shall be sub­ject to review by the Plan­ning and Zon­ing Com­mis­sion and shall be specif­i­cally approved prior to issuance of a zon­ing cer­tifi­cate. In eval­u­at­ing such site plan, the Plan­ning and Zon­ing Com­mis­sion shall uti­lize the stan­dards of this Chapter.

Matt Echel­berry

Posted by Staff Reports on Jul 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.