Office Depot Sign Decision Deferred at ‘Contentious Meeting'

The decision over whether to allow Evanston’s to for both letter size and overall height has been deferred until next month’s meeting of the Sign Review and Appeals Board.

Evanston residents butted heads with Office Deport representatives at Thursday night’s board meeting at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave., which board members described as the “most contentious, most attended” meeting they had ever seen.

Office Depot representatives in attendance sought approval from the board for two proposed signs on their recently renovated 2722 Green Bay Road store: a northward facing Office Depot logo reaching 25 feet 2 inches at its highest point (9 feet 10 inches above the 15 foot 6 inches limit) and an eastward facing logo reaching 19 feet 2.5 inches (3 feet 8.5 inches over the limit).

The crowd of near 40 Evanston residents in attendance consisted almost entirely of middle-aged and senior citizen neighbors of the Office Depot, who had come to voice complaints that an illuminated, big-lettered, highly-placed sign would shine into the windows of their homes late at night, and generally decrease the atmosphere and property values of the surrounding neighborhood.

“The sign would clearly shine into my bedroom, my bathroom and my sunroom,” said Susan Forte, who lives with her family on Isabella Street, across the street and the train tracks from the Office Depot. “And it totally ruins the new construction that we just finished.”

Evanston resident Randy Otte presented the board with a 150-signature petition from neighborhood residents, saying that while most considered Office Depot a “good neighbor,” the proposed new signs were generally unnecessary in a community that already frequents the store.

Rosalyn Holderfield, a business developer with ID Associates who was hired as a sign consultant by Office Depot, countered that the sign’s LED lights would be dimmer than neon ones, that the proposed placement and size of the letters were most aesthetically pleasing in the new facade, that a new awning prevented the sign from being lowered, and that the logo would help bring in business from Green Bay Road motorists.

“What we want to achieve is giving the maximum visibility from the furthest distance away so that everybody will know that the Office Depot is there,” Holderfield said. “So when you’re traveling, you can see it from a greater distance.”

Holderfield said that the sign would be lit only from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., instead of a full 24 hours, as it was before the renovation began.

Toward the end of the meeting, though, Holderfield began to make concessions, lowering the proposed height of the northward facing sign to 22 feet and the eastward facing sign to 16 feet 8 inches.

The board seemed relatively appeased by the compromise.

Board member Marnie Kadish called the new proposal “reasonable.” Of the eastward facing sign, board member Susan Felts said, “I mean, it’s only a foot [over].” And Board member Thomas Keith even began an official motion to approve the sign on the east facade.

But some residents protested, saying the board was failing to follow the guidelines for approval laid forth in the City Code.

According to Section 4-12-17 of the Evanston City Code, “variations shall only be approved to overcome an exceptional condition which poses practical difficulty or particular hardship.” Among other standards, the code states that such hardships must be unique (not merely serve as a convenience to the applicant), not self-created and not harm public welfare.

Evanston resident Craig Peterson said that Office Depot’s proposal was in direct conflict with such standards.

“May I suggest, very respectfully, that this board should view the petition as not establishing any of the standards, let alone all of them,” Peterson said.

In response, the board deferred decision on the issue and asked Office Depot representatives to return to the June 9 meeting with new blueprints detailing what the store would look like with smaller signs that fell within City regulations.

The Sign Review and Appeals Board will reconvene June 9 at 7:30 p.m. in Meeting Room 2404 of the Lorriane H. Morton Civic Center.

Decisions made by the board are final and do not require City Council approval unless appealed.