Image: Progress at Aaron's - Jul '09
Aaron's facade is slowly moving along. I don't see the point in adding the generic strip-plaza Dryvit "peak" feature to the more modern low slug building but that is off topic... ;)
I question the need for the free standing pole sign (types of signage). Is there really a need for an additional sign 30 ft in front of and 20ft above the redundant sign that will be placed on the front facade? Is there a need for these types of signs anywhere in the the city where the speed limit is 30 mph max, sight lines don't extend for more than a few blocks and trees are more common than not? This is not S. Transit in the town where the business will be behind a foot ball field sized parking lot and being searched out by cars driving by at 50 mph.
If signage at the side walk is desired (and we weren't sucessful at getting anything but a parking lot built at the street frontage) a freestanding ground sign would be much more appropriate within our urban context. See this one at a new Walgreen's in Clarance:
If the new sign ordinance has not outright banned these elevated free standing pole signs in the city, it should. They add nothing in the urban environment and at best take away from the smaller human scaled features around them.
2 comments:
With the sort of lot that Aarons has, I'd almost say that a low sign like the Walgreens one pictured is going to have MORE visibility. It's not an area that you are going to have parked cars obscuring a low sign (as you would at Friendly's). And as it's not a highway speed area, I really do not see the need for the elevation. Heck, they are getting quite a bit of business as is without a pole sign as is.
Even Friendly's, which is built right up to Main St, doesn't need the free standing pole sign. Like Aaron's it's probably just a corporate template suited for a site on an outparcel on some 5 lane arterial. They should be left at those type of sites. But they most likely are blindly submitted by the corporation and then blindly accepted by the city.
If the concern is somebody being able to see your sign from 2-3 blocks away instead of one, just put a projecting sign off the builing like Taboo and some others on Main St. One is not trying to inspire/get the attention of commuters zoombie driving past at 50 mph. If you are in the city, you are driving slow enough to find a place and most likely in the area on purpose.
Items like this may seem small, but when you slowly let items like this (and street side parking, etc)start to add up you have intersections that look like Shimer and S. Transit instead of Main and Market. With all the emphasis on signage it seems strange to still be allowing these.
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