Residents to lobby builders for smaller store signs

WESLEY CHAPEL -- Wesley Chapel residents are moving their campaign for smaller and prettier store signs to the shopping center developers themselves.

Frustrated at Pasco County's delays in tightening its sign ordinance, neighborhood activist Dennis Smith plans to lobby developers directly, appealing to their sense of neighborliness.

First on Smith's list is Crescent Resources Inc., the North Carolina company behind the Shoppes of New Tampa at Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and Williamsburg Drive.

Anchored by a Publix supermarket and a Beall's department store scheduled to open this year, the Shoppes at New Tampa proposes raising two 30-foot pylon signs along Bruce B. Downs.

Crescent is repeating the pattern begun by a SuperTarget less than a mile to the south along County Line Road. Opposed by Smith and his neighbors, SuperTarget, which opened in March, erected a 40-foot pole sign featuring the store's red-and-white bull's eye.

Such tall signs are legal under current rules, but Pasco's proposed sign ordinance likely would encourage ground-hugging, unobtrusive monument signs of the sort required on the Hillsborough County side of Bruce B. Downs.

Fearing lawsuits from developers if they rush a sign ordinance to completion, Pasco officials on Tuesday hired attorney Gary Resnick for $28,000 to fine tune the proposed rule changes. Approval is still months away.

Smith can't afford to wait, with the Shoppes at New Tampa already halfway built. But he knows he's got little more than the art of persuasion on his side.

"It's get down on our hands and knees and beg," Smith said Wednesday. "What leverage do we have? There's no incentive for them to do anything else."

Robert Moody, Crescent's director of retail development in Florida, said the signs his company has ordered will complement the neighborhood as they provide retailers advertising they need.

"I'd be sorry if they lobbied us," Moody said. "I think it's going to be a very, very fine center."

The two 30-foot signs proposed for Bruce B. Downs will consist of an archlike base of two-colored brick topped by lighted aluminum business logos.

"It's not just a pipe sticking out of the ground," Moody said.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright