Palmdale Suspends Ban on Large Signs, to Builders’ Relief

Responding to an eleventh-hour plea by home builders, the Palmdale City Council has agreed to suspend a city ban due to take effect this weekend on 4-by-8-foot signs used to advertise new housing projects.

After years of debate, the city in mid-October banned builders’ smaller stick signs that had long cluttered city streets, drawing complaints from residents that the signs were ugly. The ban on the larger signs was to have begun this weekend, with city crews due to begin hauling them away Monday.

But a representative of the Antelope Valley Building Industry Assn. begged the council Thursday night to reconsider, warning that new housing tracts have few other means of attracting potential buyers in the slumping real estate market.

“I have to implore you in the strongest terms,” said Kirk Lazaruk, an officer in the association and head of the KML Group, a development consulting firm. He asked that builders be allowed to meet with city officials to discuss potential regulations that would permit the larger signs to remain.

After council discussion, Palmdale City Administrator Bob Toone directed the city’s Planning Department to suspend enforcement of the ban on the larger signs, pending the meeting with builders. The ban on smaller stick signs remains in effect.

Mike Morrisey, a Palmdale building-code enforcement officer, said there were about 150 of the larger signs throughout the 80-square-mile city in mid-October. But Morrisey estimated that as many as 50 of those signs may already have been removed by their owners in anticipation of the now-suspended ban.

Lazaruk proposed that the city issue permits for the larger signs and restrict their location and numbers, promising that developers would abide by the restrictions.

Council members agreed to have city officials discuss the concept, but voiced concern that builders had abused similar understandings in the past. “If you’re going to make any agreements with us, we’re probably going to be pretty hard-core that you stick by them,” Councilman Jim Root said.

The signs issue was not on the council’s posted agenda Thursday, but Lazaruk raised it as part of the public comment period near the end of the meeting after 11 p.m. No residents who had complained about the issue in the past were present at the time.