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Signs

Albuquerque is attempting to improve the view, by reducing the size of signs

Written and photographed by MARK G. BRALLEY

Limiting the size of Albuquerque commercial signs proposed by Mayor Martin Chávez in June 2006 isn’t gaining any traction in the business community.

Albuquerque’s Route 66 looking west from Central Avenue and I-40 prior to the 1972 sign ordinance, circa 1971.

A task force to examine the idea of limiting signs to a height of five feet, “started and then fell flat,” according to the division manager, of the City’s Planning Department, Russell Brito.

“Initially, the mayor had a press conference and stated that he wanted a new sign regulations and he wanted a maximum height of a sign to be five feet,” Brito said. “It was originally scheduled for the EPC (Environmental Planning Commission) probably about three months ago, and it’s every month the administration has requested an additional 30-day deferral.”

Brito, left, said that the task force, of which he was the city’s representative, met a couple of times, and that members of the group made up of the business community didn’t attend. He would not identify the other members of the task force without permission of Planning Department Director Richard Dineen.

“We’re at a standstill,” Brito said and he has no directions at this time.

Chávez made his proposal at an unrelated press conference and there are no talking points on file or a press release available from the mayor’s office, according to Felicia Giron, the assistant to the public information officer.

Yet, the announcement in the press generated interest and instant criticism for Chávez' suggestion that Albuquerque should follow the Scottsdale, Ariz., model of using what are known in the sign industry as monument signs, because they resemble wide tombstones.

“We’re not Scottsdale,” was what Planning Department spokeswoman Deborah Nason said she was hearing from people who called her concerned about the issue. The other thing she said she was hearing was that signs should not add to visual pollution.

Scottsdale is an upscale suburb of Phoenix that adopted a stringent ordinance prohibiting large pole mounted signs.

“You can’t even find the McDonald’s because the signs are so small,” said Albuquerque journalist Dennis Domrzalski, a former Scottsdale Daily Progress reporter who worked there prior to the new ordinance and still visits in-laws in the Phoenix area.

The mayor’s spokeswoman, Deborah James, did not return calls seeking an interview with Chávez or to answer questions.

Speaking of the mayor, “He does want to see some improvement of aesthetics for signs,” Brito said. “He (Chávez) has pointed out that the city has a lot of great views: to the mountains, to the volcanoes, to the Bosque, that are at times blocked or obstructed by existing signs.”

“So I think that will still be the focus and his intent for your sign regulations. A task force does mean it’s going to mean, subject to compromise,” Brito said.

The city council has grappled with signs and billboards for decades. In the early ’70s, the then city commission proposed changes to what was seen by many as Las Vegas-style gaudy advertising signs, especially along Menaul Boulevard. In 1974, there was a major change to the sign ordinance.

“It’s a big building and they’re taking advantage of all of their facades,” Brito said, when asked about, what seems to be huge signage, such as the Biallio’s, near San Mateo on Menaul.

“A lot of these signs are existing, are legal but non-conforming. They were in existence before the current regs were established. They were allowed to remain, so they were grandfathered in. Big old non-conforming uses,” Brito said.

The current thinking is that sign owners will have 10 years to come into compliance should the council receive and pass a change to the ordinance.

“The mayor wanted to make it clear that he wanted to give special consideration for historical signs, like some neon signs on Central, some of the old motor courts, things like that and other signs around the city,” Brito said of his discussions with Chávez. “Like the old bowling alley sign at Menaul and San Pedro. That Staples took over that sign, but they left the bowling ball and the bowling pin there.”

Billboards are not covered by this proposed ordinance.

About the turn of the century, 2000, 2001 a moratorium was put in place, Brito said. “No new billboards and the city council passed an ordinance that said billboards can be put up, but we have a cap and replace rule. Can’t put up a new billboard unless an old one comes down.”

“I don’t believe that this ordinance will pass,” said Albuquerque’s general manager of Clear Channel Outdoor , Sally Adams. “Due to the push-back of many of the people in the businesses continuing to be told how to spend their money. What we will do, what we can’t do.”

Though the new sign ordinance does not address outdoor, the industry term for billboards, Adams feels concern for the proposal.

 “How can we be allowed to stay in business and grow into the areas where the city is growing, without ridiculous restrictions that puts us out of business eventually,” Adams said.

“I think the best thing they can do is develop a task force that we can come together and come up with a compromise,” Adams said. “OK, mayor, you’re wanting to come up with improving the aesthetics of the city, we’re fine with that. How can we come to a compromise?”

“A task force does mean it’s going to mean subject to compromise,” Brito said before a group was assembled.

 “They have strategically zoned out outdoor in the new developing areas,” Adams said of some problems caused by the moratorium. “Which is unfortunate, because businesses contact us every day and want to reach into the Westside and where the city’s growing and talk to those people in an affordable way and we can’t help them. We can’t grow.”

“We have to reinvent ourselves,” Adams said. One reinvention is through the use of high technology digital boards, where the full color illuminated signs change messages every eight seconds.

“The digital signage allows the customer something that they have never been able to do on outdoor before, something they can almost do on broadcast and that is to change their message almost instantaneously, but for sure every 24 hours,” Adams said.

A radio station advertiser can display the song playing on the radio.

“That’s cool for radio to do that,” Adams said. “If there’s an Amber Alert or Homeland Security message, we can get that information uploaded from the city to the FTP Web site instantaneously and have that scroll or run on all these units.”

Adams insists that the outdoor sign industry is striving to be responsible corporate and community partners while acknowledging that some are not fans of her work.

“There are a lot of eyesores out there in signage,” Adams said. “We have some that we’re continuing to improve, beyond on-premise street businesses that go out of business and their signs are left there vacant for years, and rusted. They need to come down and be rebuilt or they need to come down. I mean I totally agree with that.”

When the new digital boards went up, the first month was dedicated to advertising city programs, non-profits and cultural events.

“I’m in-coming chair for the ACVB so I’m a big tourism freak. So I really wanted to help out the tourism side and therefore the zoo and cultural services and Old Town and then bring in the links with the city,” Adams said. “I mean it made total sense as a partnership with us and the city to do it that way.”

Many regular billboards use to have lights that illuminated signs from the bottom upwards casting light into the sky. More recently, lights are mounted at the top of signs to reduce scattered light.

 “The good news for the dark skies folks is these shine out and down and there’s no up lighting,” Adams said. “So we haven’t heard anything from them. And we did try to put them all in commercial enough areas that nobody was going to complain. That’s really important.”

“I think too that they want this to look a little like Scottsdale, and I think most people say, well, really, is Albuquerque like Scottsdale or is Albuquerque like Phoenix, or is Albuquerque like Durango or is Albuquerque like Denver,” Adams asked?

“I think we’re more like the bigger cities. And we want to be like the bigger cities, which is one of the good things that the mayor’s done. And I think if we can keep all that in mind, we can accomplish both. But we have to come to the table together and it won’t be because -- I -- said -- so stuff. It will be, let’s talk about how we can make this better.”

Adams’ comments seem to reverberate with what Brito said, “I think that one of the things that the mayor’s trying to do,” He said. “Is trying to stir people to have conversations within their communities with their neighbors so there can be some consensus about how big signs should be. How tall they should be. How large they should be and what kind of community do we really want. Because Albuquerque is really going through some extreme growing pains. We’ve always had kind of a steady growth going here, but over the past 10 years we sort of had more than steady growth and we’re not a small city anymore. Though people might like to think that. We are definitely a medium sized city now. We’re not a tertiary market anymore, we are now a secondary market.

 

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