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The Gulf gas station on the corner of First Street and Vineyard Avenue has been a continued point of contention at the Pleasanton City Council level after the dais voted recently to approve most of the new gas station signage permits, except the one for the big canopy.
Most of the conversation at the May 6 meeting was about how the applicant installed the new wall, price monument, canopy and pump signage without permits — which was the result of miscommunication at the staff level — and about how the city had to make decisions about these design aspects after they were already built.
“In this case, the applicant circumvented the council’s authority by installing signage prior to council review,” Councilmember Julie Testa said during the May 6 meeting. “That’s disappointing because it is our responsibility to uphold … the aesthetics and the quality of our community.”
Testa previously made comments during the April 15 meeting, which is when the council was initially set to vote on approving the signage changes. She noted that the canopy and monument signage did not fall within the guidelines set by the city’s General Plan.
“Compliance (with) the General Plan is not a waste of time; it’s our responsibility,” Testa said.
However, Testa’s motion to limit the canopy’s design to a simpler look without bright Gulf gas station franchise colors so that it looks more like some of the other gas station canopies around town failed. But staff’s recommendation to uphold the originally approved application by the city’s zoning administrator also did not receive enough votes from the council.
Instead, during the May 6 meeting, the council bifurcated the sign design review item for the gas station so that the applicant can fix the gas station’s monument sign, which was deemed non-compliant per the city’s zoning administrator’s original approval of the application. As for the canopy, the council will once again review its design once the monument sign is fixed.
Councilmember Matt Gaidos, who proposed pushing the canopy discussion to a future meeting, said he wanted to hold off on any decisions regarding the canopy until the monument is done to see if it aesthetically changes his and others’ opinions.
But he also noted how much of a predicament the entire ordeal has been for the city and how it might seem like the city is “cruel to businesses by making them redo something that they took the risk of building without a final approval”, even though this could have all been addressed had the process been carried out in a different way.
“I know that had it come before us before it was built, it’s very, very likely that it would have been modified somehow,” Gaidos said. “I think the builder’s the one that took the risk on that, not the city.”
On April 15, the council discussed the sign design review approval for Gulf’s new monument, wall, canopy and pump signage as part of a gas station rebranding. Located at 4212 First St., the site used to be the former Shell station.
Businesses in Pleasanton are required to follow a sign design review process for sites without an approved master sign program.
The design review process eventually made its way to the city’s zoning administrator who reviewed the Gulf gas station sign designs and approved them after considering a number of factors including municipal codes for dimensions and standards; downtown design guidelines; and General Plan policies.
Certain guidelines specifically talk about having attractive sign design with high quality material that has attractive colors, minimizes bright franchise colors and discourages particular franchise branding with the signage.
The council directed staff at that April meeting to return on May 6 with a timeline of the application’s approval, permitting and installation of the signage. The council also asked staff to conduct an inspection of the installed signage to determine its compliance with the zoning administrator approval and to work with the applicant to find opportunities to modify and improve the signage.
Senior planner Eric Luchini provided the council with the timeline, which showed that the sign design review was deemed complete in January following more than a month of meetings with the applicant after the original application was deemed incomplete. Once the application was complete, the city issued an approval letter with an effective date of March 5.
The application’s permits were held until that March 5 date so that the city’s building division could complete its process of checking the plans. But after the division completed its plan check, the applicant decided to install the new signage sometime between late February and early March without permits and before March 5, Luchini said.
After that is when the council first requested to review the zoning administrator’s approval of the signage at its March 4 meeting. Unaware of the council’s initial request to review the signage during that March 4 meeting, Luchini said the building division issued the sign design review permits, which is when the applicant then installed the monument signage — with those new permits.
“There was just a staff miscommunication,” Luchini said regarding the building division’s issuance of the sign design review permits on March 7. “We had not had a chance to catch up with building staff … they had already started the paperwork process before the (March 4) Council Meeting even happened and then ultimately we did not have a chance to connect with them to tell them to hold the permits.”
Staff also conducted an on-site inspection of the station on April 17 and found that the wall, canopy and pump signage were in compliance — including the signage design, colors and dimensions. But Luchini said during that inspection, staff did find that the monument sign was not in compliance with the approved plans as its height exceeded the height of the previous monument sign which was explicitly not allowed per the zoning administrator’s approval.
Consultant Guy Houston – the former state assemblymember and former Dublin mayor who is representing the Gulf gas station applicant — said that was a mistake by the contractors who installed that signage and that the applicant is happy to fix that mistake.
However, according to Luchini, the applicant was unwilling to make modifications to the wall, canopy and pump signage since those were in compliance with the zoning administrator’s approval.
Staff originally recommended to uphold the zoning administrators approval of the signage permits, including the revisions to the monument signage, but when Mayor Jack Balch motioned to approve that recommendation, the motion failed to get enough votes.
While other members of the dais like Vice Mayor Jeff Nibert said they support businesses and they did not want to discourage others from developing in the city, he recognized that the canopy was installed without a final permit at the risk of the applicant and that the city needs to enforce the General Plan.
He also said he doesn’t believe that a change from the brightly colored and lighted canopy, which was the original proposed design, to a simpler one with less franchise colors will do much to affect the gas station’s business.
“On the question of fairness, it’s not a question of do we support business or not,” Nibert said. “It’s a matter of being responsive to our community and giving our community what they have asked for when our General Plan was created.”
The applicant will have up to 90 days to fix the monument signage before coming back to the dais for a final discussion regarding what to do with the canopy.
So much wasted time and money. There was a misstep and the station received approval. The general plan is way to subjective, fix the general plan but let this business go about selling and raising money for our city! No brainer!
What did we learn from this?