Merchants Brace for Showdown Over Signs : Agoura Hills: As a seven-year grace period expires, business owners say the enforcement of a city ban could ruin them.

No one in Agoura Hills claims that the illuminated signs looming over the Ventura Freeway are pretty.

Tall, gaudy, hawking everything from gasoline to burgers to tax assistance, they are honky-tonk throwbacks to the bedroom community’s truck-stop past.

“I think they spoil the landscape,” Councilwoman Darlene McBane said. “They are just plain ugly. It makes the area look junky.”

So in their quest to rid the town of all that is unsightly, city officials in 1985 ordered merchants to tear down the offending signs within seven years and replace them with smaller, less obnoxious advertisements.

But those seven years came and went, and now with less than two weeks before the city’s deadline, only two of the 46 so-called pole signs have come down. Merchants are gearing up for a showdown with city officials, claiming that if their signs fall, so will their business.

The merchants say that if the city persists in removing the signs, they’ll sue to keep them up.

“If that sign comes down, I might as well look for another job,” Denny’s waitress Naomi Anderson said about the restaurant’s 75-foot-tall sign on Canwood Street near Kanan Road. “We might as well not be a 24-hour restaurant because no one is going to know we are here.”

As the March 19 deadline approaches, Anderson and others have crowded City Council meetings in recent weeks to challenge Resolution 85-162, the 1985 directive regulating which signs can stay and which signs must go.

Slogans such as “Save Our Sign” are emblazoned across T-shirts, and merchants have collected hundreds of signatures from sympathetic patrons, yet the City Council remains adamant that the signs must go. And in last year’s bitter municipal elections, what to do about the pole signs--as opposed to hanging signs or wall signs--was one of the two major issues that divided candidates.

“It looks like both sides are on a collision course, headed for a showdown,” said Jess Thomas, president of the Old Agoura Homeowners Assn.

Feuds over signs are nothing new. Most California cities have ordinances governing what is and what is not an acceptable sign, and those cities generally have faced the ire of their local merchants.

But the ordinances usually stand up to legal challenges. California courts have upheld a city’s right to phase out non-conforming uses such as the pole signs, holding that the public good in having the signs removed outweighs the loss incurred by their owners.

Those who track such disputes locally can’t remember a battle as fierce as the one being waged in Agoura Hills.

Just west along the Ventura Freeway in Thousand Oaks, for instance, city officials worked with the local Chamber of Commerce to phase out more than five times the number of signs Agoura Hills wants to ax.

The way Agoura Hills City Manager David Carmany sees it, the city’s goal of removing the pole signs is “a classic case of a little city trying to better itself.” In a 1989 survey of residents, getting rid of the signs--called “visual clutter” by pole sign opponents--was one of the top three priorities for beautifying the city’s central business district along the Ventura Freeway, which cuts through town at the foot of Ladyface Mountain.

The only tasks ranking above pole sign removal were taking down the billboards and utility lines that crowd the freeway. But the city can’t touch the billboards because of federal laws protecting freedom of expression. In addition, federal laws would require the city to pay the sign’s owners for future loss of business, which could cost millions of dollars.

The price tag for putting all utility lines underground would run about $1 million per mile--considerably more than the city of 20,000 can afford with its $5.4-million annual budget.

So the council took aim at the pole signs, all of which were erected before the city incorporated in 1982.

Merchants said they support the idea of beautifying the freeway corridor but wonder how much good removing their signs will do when billboards and utility lines remain. Besides, they argue, many of the pole signs that stand outside the smaller shops along Agoura Road are less than 15 feet tall. Yet they are being swept up in the fight to rid the freeway of their 60- and 70-foot-tall cousins.

And then there is the cost.

A report commissioned by the city in 1990 concluded that businesses would lose an estimated $5.7 million in the first year after their signs are removed. That’s about $300,000 more than the city’s budget. Most of that loss would be borne by the service stations and restaurants that depend on freeway travelers for most of their business.

Terry Herrick, owner of the Jack In The Box restaurant on Kanan Road near Agoura Road, said an informal survey of his customers revealed that almost 90% come in off the freeway. The city’s report estimated that Herrick’s restaurant would lose about $230,000 but also concludes that the loss could be recouped in later years through alternative forms of advertising.

“How?” Herrick asked. “Say I lose $230,000 in the first year. I can’t make that up. It’s gone. There is no way . . . that I am going to make up a $230,000 loss.”

Jess Ruf, owner of Lumber City on Agoura Road, agreed.

“When you start talking about taking that much out of a retail operation, you’re devaluating the business,” he said.

“It’s kind of like reverse condemnation. I imagine if they don’t want any businesses in the freeway corridor, then this is the thing to do.”

Citing that kind of financial hardship, nine merchants so far have asked that their signs be exempted from the ordinance. They point out that six signs deemed historically significant or of public service already have been rescued from the wrecking ball--including a bank sign that flashes time and temperature just across the street from Jack In The Box.

If the merchants sue, some legal experts believe that they will get a more sympathetic hearing because conservative judges who have taken the bench in the last decade may be more willing to rule in favor of property owners.

City officials point out that the merchants have had seven years to figure out alternative forms of advertising but they remain insistent that the signs are their biggest and only hope of luring customers off the freeway and into their shops.

At a meeting last month, about 20 merchants told Councilman Ed Kurtz that they wanted the city to conduct another survey of residents on what to do about the pole signs. If a majority of residents wanted the signs to stay, then the merchants would request the city to back off. But the merchants made no promises about what they would do if a majority of residents wanted the signs torn down.

The proposal was met with silence when Kurtz presented it to other council members.

“The only compromise they seemed to suggest was, ‘Give up, city. Surrender, Agoura Hills.’ That’s not negotiation or compromise,” Councilwoman Louise Rishoff said.

For its part, the city supported a pilot program that would allow service stations and restaurants to put their logos on state freeway signs that now promise just food, fuel and lodging. But that effort was opposed by the merchants because it did not do anything for businesses that sell items like shoes or tools. The merchants have withdrawn their opposition to the bill, which awaits a vote in the Legislature.

If administrative and legal remedies fail, the ordinance allows the city to rip down the signs and charge the merchants. But “that’s not the way I want to see the issue resolved,” Rishoff said. “Reasonable people should be able to find some agreement on how to implement this ordinance.”

BACKGROUND

The 1985 directive that ordered the removal of pole signs in the city of Agoura Hills also governs every other type of sign. Passed to “preserve and enhance the unique character and visual appearance of the city,” the city’s sign regulations prohibit neon signs, revolving signs and roof signs in addition to pole signs. Signs can contain no more than three colors, and in shopping centers, all the lettering of various signs must be the same color and style. No more than 25% of any sign can include descriptive wording not related to the name of the business. Some types of signs that did not meet the city’s requirements were allowed to remain until they were remodeled or replaced by their owners. But the city ordered all pole signs to come down within seven years.