After working over the course of several meetings, the Lexington Planning Commission voted 6-0 on Thursday to approve design standards for internally illuminated canopy signs for the city’s commercial districts, though some members indicated they were still opposed to such signs being utilized in the downtown historic district.
“I guess I just wonder what’s changed,” said Commission member Charlie Hall. “And maybe minds have changed. We’ve certainly gone over this a lot. I, personally, have not changed [my mind].”
Other members of the Commission felt a little differently about allowing the signs after the discussions and work put into drafting the design standards. Commission Chair Shannon Spencer said that she “didn’t have the same strong feelings against it” though she added that she did “understand the concerns.”
Hall and Spencer were among the four members of the Planning Commission that voted in favor of a motion to deny an application for an internally illuminated canopy sign by the owner of The Gin Hotel at the commission’s June 12 meeting. Two members, Jon Eastwood and Krista Anderson, voted against the motion at that meeting.
When the proposal went to City Council at its Aug. 7 meeting, many Council members expressed a desire to approve the request and sent it back to the Planning Commission to allow them to further develop the design standards to address issues that they had with the original request.
One of the main concerns that was discussed was in regard to the brightness of the signs and how to regulate the level of light put out by the illuminated letters. At Thursday’s meeting, city planner Arne Glaeser proposed a brightness limit of 800 lumens per letter and a maximum color temperature of 2700 Kelvin, putting both on the lower end of the brightness spectrum. Those numbers were approved by the Planning Commission.
The biggest change from the initial request was in the size of the letters that would be allowed.
The owner of the hotel initially requested letters of 6 inches in height and standards were developed based on that request.
After consideration and discussion, the Planning Commission allowed letters to be up to 12 inches in height on buildings up to three stories in height with a maximum allowed area of 7.5 square feet. For buildings taller than three stories, the letters can be up to 16 inches tall and the sign can have a maximum area of 10 square feet. In either case, the sign can’t be more than 15 feet above grade level on the street frontage.
To further limit the number of buildings that could have this kind of sign, they are only allowed on buildings with more than 40 feet of street frontage and can’t be attached to awnings, vehicle fueling station canopies or pitched roof structures.
Some discussion was had around the language of the motion to approve as the Commission worked to find a way to phrase it to allow members who felt that they couldn’t support these kinds of signs to still vote in favor of the design standards they had helped develop. Eastwood made a motion to approve the standards that Commission had developed and Anderson provided the second. The motion carried in a 6-0 vote, with Commission member Tori Bates not in attendance.
The new design standards will go to City Council for final review at a future meeting.
