Clients call Joan Pittroff's RE/MAX real estate office with a common question as they approach the gleaming, nine-story building she shares with 95 other agents in Columbia: "Where are you?"
Although her building is at the intersection of two major boulevards and next to The Mall in Columbia, it bears no sign of her business. There is no building number or name in sight. When the trees are in bloom, even the signs above the door are hidden.
"The most difficult part of being in business in downtown Columbia is the signage," Pittroff mourned.
That's a common complaint in Columbia, where the strict rules governing signs can make it hard for visitors and residents to find their way around, and even gas stations have understated displays. Now, those concerns are being amplified as the town's master developer seeks to add thousands of new apartments and millions of square feet of commercial space to central Columbia — as well as more signs to help people find their way around.
But fears of overcommercialization remain strong in Columbia, with some residents and politicians arguing that without tight controls, the downtown could wind up looking more like the neon-lit strips of tourist towns.
"I'm concerned about a bunch of electronic billboards flashing continually, like at Ocean City or Las Vegas," rural western Howard County Councilman Greg Fox, a Fulton Republican, said at a recent work session.
Even at the start, Columbia's founder James W. Rouse worried that there weren't enough signs in his planned new town, where the county government makes the zoning laws. "At the very minimum we should have some sign inside of Columbia that identifies the Merriweather Post Pavilion as being present and states what it is offering," he wrote in a typed memo on July 7, 1969, two years after the first homes were built.
No such marquee was ever built.
Over the years, not much has changed. "With Columbia, everything looks the same," said office worker Chris Daley. He said he has a good sense of direction but sometimes gets sidetracked into the wrong shopping center while looking for his favorite lunch place.
Caryn Lasser said that years ago, she would take her children to the indoor swim center in Wilde Lake Village, but had no idea the center included several places where they could eat. They would leave the pool with nap time closing in, but saw only the center's blank back wall.
"That whole stretch of office building has no signs," she said of the center, Columbia's first, which is now a half-empty relic awaiting demolition and redevelopment.
Dallas-based master developer Howard Hughes Corp., a spin-off from General Growth Properties, and its supporters say a new sign regime is badly needed as Columbia develops more of an urban core.
The downtown plan approved a year ago calls for up to 5,500 apartments and about 6 million square feet of offices, stores, hotels and cultural amenities, along with a new pedestrian-friendly street grid and large public plazas, over the next 30 years. If completed, it would transform what is now a car-centric, suburban-style shopping mall surrounded by parking lots and a small lakefront.
David Weinreb, CEO of the Howard Hughes Corp., said that a new sign law is "critical. The code has to recognize a downtown that's unique."
There's no danger of schlock, he said. "The goal has been to create a world-class experience," and his company won't allow anything that would hurt that image.
The five-member County Council has been struggling to craft a workable, less restrictive sign law just for central Columbia to augment that next phase of the town's development. A final vote is expected next month.
"We will need to have signs that enhance the downtown without overwhelming it. We're still working through what that will look like," said County Councilwoman Jen Terrasa.
A bill before the council calls for more and larger signs. That includes the possibility of up to 60 percent more square feet of wall-mounted signs, signs under awnings, free-standing "monument" signs, "marquee" theatre style signs, directional "blade" signs, larger signs at the top of tall buildings, video messaging and high-tech, perhaps interactive electronic signs.
The new standards are often technical — allowing, for example, two square feet of sign for each linear square foot of building frontage, limiting free-standing monument signs to less than six feet in height and 30 square feet in total, and specifying required distances from curbs or windows. There were no restrictions on electronic signs.
But after decades of strict aesthetic controls designed in the 1960s to keep Columbia from looking like Glen Burnie or Randallstown, some worry that this huge new project could go too far the other way.
Councilwoman Courtney Watson, whose district includes cluttered commercial stretches of U.S. 40 and U.S. 1, is worried about allowing more signs in downtown. If the current suburban sign code has produced visual clutter along major highways, she recently asked, what will the new downtown look like?
"If you drive up and down Route 40, it doesn't look very suburban. Do we really want more?"
Alan Klein, leader of a citizens group critical of the scale of the downtown project, agrees that more signs will be needed, but says that if there aren't tight standards, electronic signs should be banned. In addition, the Howard Hughes Corp. evokes less confidence than the old Rouse company, he told the council.
"Now … we are owned by Howard Hughes, which brings the neon ambiance of Las Vegas or Houston, Texas," he said, advocating for a sign law that would be "much more specific and more restrictive."
No one objects to more utilitarian, directional signs. In fact, residents often complain that their commercial village centers are hurting partly because they aren't easily seen. Oakland Mills Village Center is tucked away amid homes, out of sight; Hickory Ridge sits over a low knoll often invisible to those driving nearby.
"We're talking about a downtown," said County Councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty, whose district includes the town center. "We're not only talking about residents. We're talking about drawing people in."
Sigaty said her travels to tourist-friendly places like Paris and Rome were made more pleasant by lots of well-placed directional signs. Fears of highway clutter are misplaced, she said.
"There's no chance downtown Columbia is going to look like U.S. 40," she said, because those signs were designed to catch the attention of drivers on a major highway. "Downtown's not going to be that."
Daley, who lives in Baltimore's historic Canton neighborhood but works in Columbia, hopes that's true, and that new places will be easier to find.
"It's a great location to work," he said. "Everything you need is here."