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Item No: 5A Meeting Date: March 18, 2015 Type of Business: Public Hearing City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Mounds View Planning Commission From: Heidi Heller, Planning Associate Item Title/Subject: Consideration of a 4.5 foot Variance to Allow a 20.5 Foot Tall Ground Sign at 2704 County Road 10; Planning Case VR2015- 001 Introduction: The applicant, George Winiecki, owner of 2704 County Road 10, is requesting a variance to allow the existing ground sign to be expanded 4.5 feet, to 20.5 feet tall. The Zoning Code indicates that no ground sign in a business district may exceed 16 feet in height. Discussion: According to the Municipal Code, Section 1008.09, Subdivision 3, ground signs are limited to a height of no more than 16 feet without a variance. The applicant owns the building at 2704 County Road 10 and operates his insurance agency here. He also rents some of the building to a few different tenants who have their business information on the sign. Mr. Winiecki has an existing ground sign that is 16.5 feet tall with a brick base. He wants to reconfigure the sign panels and possibly add an electronic sign. Since his ground sign meets the current sign code in regards to it already having masonry on it, Mr. Winiecki can change more than just the panels on his sign. He intends to keep the existing brick base and the sign frame, and just change the sizes of the individual businesses sign panels. He feels that in order to best meet his and his tenant’s sign needs, the ground sign should be four feet taller. The applicant’s sign is currently 104 square feet, within the allowed 200 square feet. The sign could instead be widened and then would not need a variance. The cost to change the sign base and frame in order to support a wider sign is high, and the applicant has chosen to apply for a height variance instead. Variance Considerations: For the City to approve this variance, as with any variance request, there needs to be demonstrated practical difficulty associated with the property that makes a literal interpretation of the Code overly burdensome or restrictive to a property owner. State statutes require that the governing body (the Planning Commission) review a set of specified criteria for each application and make its decision in accordance with these criteria. The City has set these criteria in Section 1125.02, Subdivision 2, of the City Code. The Code clearly states that a hardship exists when all of the criteria are met. The individual criteria and a staff comment about each are as follows: a. The variance is in harmony with the general purposes and intent of these regulations. The property at 2704 County Road 10 is a commercial property that fronts the main commercial corridor through the city, which is not unique. The sign code was amended in 2013 to lower the height limits of all the ground signs in business and industrial zoning districts down to 16 feet in order to improve the aesthetics of the County Road 10 corridor.