Questions about what kinds, size and placement of signs should be allowed in a rebuilt central Columbia dominated a Howard County Council work session Monday that also included discussion of plans to buy a Columbia office building and create a county Veterans Commission.
Electronic, interactive video signs can be as fascinating as the giant-size changing revue of human faces that seem to spit water in Chicago's popular Millennium Park fountain, according to a consultant to the developer of downtown, or the brightly colored electronic "bricks" that line a Texas college's pedestrian tunnel and that play music when touched.
In considering sign regulations for the coming urbanized downtown Columbia, Sensory Interactive President and CEO Randy Byrd told the council that it should forget about conventional ideas about signs. Digital, cutting-edge signs, the Towson-based consultant said, should "engage, entertain, be interactive. Digital can do so, so much more. Static signs are on the way out."
In a town where visitors often complain that there are so few signs that destinations are hard to find, the sign discussion took up most of the unusual second council work session this month. By 7 p.m., when the meeting ended to make way for another, Council Chairman Calvin Ball said it was clear that a third session on signs and downtown Columbia design guidelines that control how entire neighborhoods will look will be needed before a scheduled vote Feb. 7.
If a third session isn't scheduled, however, a vote on the downtown issues could be put off until March. The council is also to vote in February on new zoning rules for beehives and on a proposal by County Executive Ken Ulman to buy an east Columbia office building the county is renting.
The council breezed through a quick review of the office purchase deal with no apparent objections from members. After a few questions, Fulton Republican Greg Fox made it clear he is on board.
"Overall, I think the transaction makes sense," he said. No other members had questions, though Ellicott City Democrat Courtney Watson said each member has gone over the purchase details with administration officials.
"Some of us are pretty comfortable," she said, "and that's why we're not asking questions."
Ulman administration officials have said that spending $26 million for the 160,000-square-foot Ascend One building in Columbia makes sense financially because the private firm that still occupies one-quarter of the space would pay $1 million per year in rent for at least the next few years, while the county would save on rent it was planning to pay for the remaining space.
In addition, officials said the building could house more county agencies in one place, eliminating rent the county pays to lease space for the health department, for example. Finally, the much smaller county-owned Gateway building, bought during the early 1990s recession, could be eventually sold, further reducing the cost.
Public Works Director James Irvin also said the Ascend One building was designed to accept a 40,000-square-foot addition if more space were ever needed.
The new sign regulations for central Columbia proved to be a much more difficult topic.
The downtown Columbia design guidelines must be approved for the giant 30-year redevelopment project to go forward. It sets standards for the materials and the look of all the buildings, streets and open spaces that would apply for all the 5,500 planned residential units and nearly 6 million square feet of new commercial and retail space, plus cultural amenities like public plazas. None of the individual neighborhood concept plans can be approved without the design standards.
The sign regulations that would allow different, more urban standards in central Columbia than are allowed in the rest of the county have been contentious, with some, like the Columbia Association leadership, worried that allowing more and larger signs downtown would overdo things, especially when it comes to electronic message boards or other video signs.
"I am concerned about a bunch of electronic billboards flashing continually, like in Ocean City or Las Vegas," Fox said at the work session.
But Byrd, a former Rouse Co. official brought in by Howard Hughes Co., the downtown's master developer, said the old idea of electronic signs is quickly changing to more creative, artistic uses that often match their size to the size and shape of the building they are attached to.
"You want to create a display that makes people look at it for five minutes, and return with their friends," Byrd said.
"It's a new technology," Byrd said, that is being used experimentally in places like Boston, Dallas and Columbus, Ohio. And because it is so new, it is constantly changing and evolving, with new ideas popping up almost daily. To ban them or regulate them by older arbitrary size standards would make little sense, he said, though regulation is needed.
This new kind of messaging needs professional oversight, Byrd said, and the hours of operation should be regulated. In public gathering spaces, they can attract people, he suggested.
The council reviewed the details for more traditional signs in the proposed sign code, including size and how rules might apply to different kinds of signs, like movie-style marquee signs, free-standing "monument" signs, small directional signs, sign locations and the placement and size of large signs attached to the top of buildings more than 10 stories high.
Phil Engelke, a Columbia resident and professional sign consultant who serves as chairman of the county's Design Advisory Panel, also answered questions and provided guidance. "When you see a building sign 100 feet above the ground, the letters are 6-12 feet high" to be readable, he said. "That would be part of the skyline of Columbia. It might seem a bit scary."
Proposed regulations on beehives were not discussed at the work session, and a vote is expected next month. Instead of treating bees in the same category as farm animals and requiring backyard hives to be at least 200 feet from a neighbor, the proposed law requires a 25-foot distance, reduced to 10 feet with a 6-foot-high fence or hedge.