Small signs, big problem San Jose to review its sign ordinance that has frustrated Stevens Creek dealerships Friday, April 25, 2008 By Katherine Conrad Customers searching for Oak Tree Mazda on Stevens Creek Boulevard need to look for the towering Toyota sign - and that's the problem. The Mazda sign is so small it's easy to miss the dealership next door. But Shaun Del Grande, president of Oak Tree Mazda, had no choice when he rebuilt his dealership in 2007 because the city of San Jose will not allow anything larger. If he wanted a prominent sign, he could have one, but it would mean moving his entire dealership across the street into the city of Santa Clara, where dealerships can install signs more than twice the size allowed in San Jose. This inequity is about to change. The city's sign ordinance - long the bane of businesses throughout San Jose - is in for an overhaul, at least on Stevens Creek Boulevard. San Jose Planning Director Joe Horwedel says the City Council will be asked this summer to alter the ordinance governing the size and height of signs along Stevens Creek to "mirror" Santa Clara's code. "We've worked to keep housing off Stevens Creek and to keep it commercial," Horwedel says. "Now we want to make sure that our car dealers are not at a competitive disadvantage." Car dealers on the San Jose side of Stevens Creek Boulevard have been frustrated for a long time over the disparity. In each city, sign size is determined by the dimensions of the lot and street frontage. In Santa Clara, a sign can be 35-feet high and a maximum size of 300 square feet. By comparison, the maximum height for a sign in San Jose is 20 feet and the maximum size is 120 square feet. "This doesn't make sense for an auto row when right across the street is the city of Santa Clara, which makes it much easier to do business," says San Jose Councilman Pete Constant, who called the code "almost incomprehensible," requiring business owners to hire consultants to decipher it. Given the sizable amount of taxes paid by car dealers to the city - $12 million in 2007, down from $12.9 million in 2006 - Constant says the city ought to do all it can to keep business inside city limits. Constant, along with Mayor Chuck Reed and Pat Dando, president of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, has met with car dealers to hear their complaints and figure out how to keep them in the city, and prevent them from moving to Milpitas, as Piercey Toyota did last year. "As a city we should be giving them the tools to succeed," Constant says. "There was a time in San Jose when signs were equal to bad. We still have that mentality." Horwedel says that San Jose's sign ordinance is restrictive by design. "The sign code was written with a heavy emphasis on preventing blight," he says. But Dando noted that in some cases, the code has had the opposite effect. All the larger signs currently standing have been allowed because they existed before the new code was adopted. "Some signs are old and need to updated. But if the business owner updates the sign, they lose the size of the sign," she says. Del Grande says the size of his sign was determined by the length of his lot, which is quite narrow, fronting Stevens Creek. "Our sign is nothing to cheer about," he says. "Let's just say for what we're trying to do, to attract customers and identify our business location, the sign leaves quite a bit to be desired." Even Nanci Klein, manager of corporate outreach for the city who helped Del Grande navigate the permitting process when he built the dealership, agreed that the Oak Tree Mazda sign is too small. Unlike the Toyota sign at the 25-year-old dealership next door, Del Grande had to comply with the current code. "Maybe (lineal feet) is not the best criteria," she says. Klein, whose office works to retain companies and attract new business, says the code was written over many years and attempted to address "conflicting philosophies on First Amendment rights versus visual clutter or aesthetics, depending on your point of view." She welcomed the news that the ordinance may be overhauled and says she hopes the city would allow "edgier" signs that signal to visitors that they're in high-tech Silicon Valley. Katherine Conrad can be reached at (408) 299-1820 or kconrad@bizjournals.com.