Compromise on the Sign

So it’s come to this: The fate of a quirky carwash sign on Ventura Boulevard is going to be decided in court. There’s plenty of blame to go around for how this impasse developed--and therefore plenty of opportunity for those involved to show a little common sense and resolve this thing.

To the homeowners associations, Ben Forat, the owner of the Studio City carwash, is clearly the culprit. He put up his fiberglass monument--a pink 1957 Corvette atop a yellow sponge held by a giant hand--without regard to size and placement restrictions in the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan.

He has since defied a City Council-ordered compromise to reduce the sign’s size and move it farther back from the street. He took the city to court, lost, and now faces an April 11 court hearing--and up to a year in jail if convicted--on misdemeanor charges of erecting an illegal sign and failing to comply with a city building and safety order.

Forat vows that the sign will “never, ever, ever, ever, ever come down or be moved until every other sign on Ventura Boulevard has come down.”

If Forat seems a tad, well, inflexible, he has emerged as something of a folk hero to those who see the Corvette as fun and imaginative or who look up and down cluttered Ventura Boulevard and wonder what the fuss is all about.

And although Forat may be the most egregious example of inflexibility, he’s not the only example. The neighborhood associations have been as determined to see his sign go as he has been to keep it. They appealed a 1999 Los Angeles Planning Commission decision to grant the sign an exemption.

For the Studio City Residents Assn. and the Cahuenga Pass Neighborhood Assn., the issue is not the sign itself but the principle, the process, the precedent. Allow one pink Corvette to tower above Ventura Boulevard and you might as well give up trying to impose any kind of order on the notoriously disordered streetscape.

But to the Planning Commission, good planning requires not just rules but the judgment to know when to make an exception. In Forat’s case, commissioners took into account that the carwash owner removed two large business signs when he installed the Corvette. And his sculpture met the spirit, if not the letter, of the Ventura Boulevard plan, which is to create a distinctive sense of place. The Corvette-on-a-sponge reflects both Southern California’s car culture and its rich history of eclectic signs.

The Times supported the Planning Commission decision. But the neighborhood associations had a right to appeal, and the City Council a right to impose a compromise. That process--not a courtroom--is still the best one for working out disagreements. And if last week’s dismissal of Forat’s civil lawsuit against the city is any sign, it’s also the best deal he’s going to get.

Common sense dictates that Forat compromise. Uncommon decency--in short supply but always welcome--calls for the neighborhood associations and City Councilman Joel Wachs to do all they can to make the compromise palatable.

Sure, they could wait until April and probably score a court victory that could lead to the sign’s removal altogether. But they could also listen to those who defend the Corvette as a modern landmark that actually adds to--not detracts from--the boulevard. And that, after all, is the point.