Pleasanton council approves Shell gas station rebranding after spirited debate

The Pleasanton City Council voted 3-2 this month to allow a gas station on the outskirts of downtown to rebrand itself as a Shell Gasoline Station and FastFill Market.

The recent vote allowed the station to update its canopy and other signage with limited brand franchise colors, a key issue that split the council over whether the branding violated city design standards.

“I think it’s going to make that corner look nice,” Vice Mayor Matt Gaidos said during the July 7 council meeting. “It is not garish. I don’t think it stands out. I don’t think it takes anything away from the gateway of Pleasanton.”

In September 2025, Guy Houston — former state assemblymember and Dublin mayor — submitted a sign design review application with the city on behalf of the gas station’s property owner to rebrand the gas station, which is located at 4191 First St., and convert it into a Sunoco gas station. Before Sunoco, it was previously a 76 gas station.

That application sought to install a new monument, wall, canopy and pump signage, all with Sunoco branding.

According to senior city planner Eric Luchini, the regulatory framework dictates that a sign design review is mandatory for any new signage proposed in a project area that lacks a master sign program.

While municipal policy encourages appealing sign aesthetics, high-quality materials, tasteful colors, and minimal use of bright franchise colors, the city’s evaluation of these elements remains inherently subjective.

Because the city does not have objective standards in place for signage in the gas station’s specific area — particularly regarding lighting levels, colors, logos and branding — the zoning administrator was forced to rely on a subjective evaluation during the design review process.

According to Luchini, the 2025 application was deemed incomplete shortly after it was first submitted. He said staff expressed support for upgrading the overall appearance of the gas station but said the franchise branding colors on the canopy needed to be reduced.

After Sunoco declined to modify its branding, the owners fired the company and decided to resubmit new designs under Shell. While this version featured less franchise branding, city staff maintained that the canopy remained overly brand-focused and inconsistent with the downtown area’s aesthetic character.

Luchini said staff offered a compromise to reduce the brand colors on the canopy to no more than 33% of the total canopy fascia height — the resubmitted application proposed 66% — but the applicant declined to make any further changes.

That’s why in February the city’s zoning administrator denied the proposed signage application, which then prompted the applicant to appeal the decision in March and send it to the Pleasanton Planning Commission for further review.

The commission heard the appeal on May 13 and approved it with a 3-1 vote, with two conditions of approval. The first stipulates that the “height of the Shell Gasoline corporate branding color band shall not exceed 50% of the total canopy fascia height” while the second states that any canopy lighting other than the underlighting will automatically be turned off every day at 10 p.m.

Houston said that after consulting with the gas station’s owners, they agreed to accept the commission’s recommendation, even if he thought the 50% limitation would make it harder to notice the branding from far away.

“They think that business is being hurt because they don’t have the proper branding out there,” Houston said.

However, the signage project still needed to come back to the council for a de novo review of the application, meaning any action previously taken by the zoning administrator or the Planning Commission was nullified and the council was tasked with making a determination on the application based on its own review.

During the July 7 meeting, most of the discussion revolved around the city’s General Plan and design standards and whether the proposed Shell canopy branding went against those standards.

Those who were against the proposed signage — either the Planning Commission’s proposed 50% limit or the original 66% — were mainly worried about the precedent it would set if the council bypassed those standards by accepting the new design.

“The proposed Shell franchise style signage and branding at this highly visible gateway location of First and Ray Street does not reflect the design directions contained in our adopted planning documents,” longtime Pleasanton resident Kelly Cousins said. “These documents encourage attractive, context-sensitive designs and specifically discourage prominent prototype or franchise branding in important downtown locations.”

She noted how the staff report says the signage proposal does not fully align with the city’s general plan policies, which encourage less prominent branding and colors.

“The goal is to draw people into our historic downtown and reinforce its character, not create a visual impression more commonly associated with highway commercial corridors or strip malls,” Cousins said.

On the other hand, Linda Kelly, another longtime Pleasanton resident, said that there is “nothing detrimental about putting a station’s colors on a canopy”.

Kelly noted that, given the city’s ongoing structural deficit issues with its budget, denying the gas station’s rebranding would have been indicative of the city’s unwillingness to work with businesses or even welcome them to the city.

“It’s the epitome of nitpicking and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,” she said regarding the overall discussion last week. “It is beyond me why so much time has been spent … over six inches of a color … Saying it destroys the aesthetics of Pleasanton has to be one of the silliest things I think I’ve ever heard.”

This divide was similarly seen on the council as both Jeff Nibert and Julie Testa echoed Cousins’ concerns over setting a precedent for other businesses.

“This isn’t about a gas station,” Testa said. “It really is about a resident-driven process.”

The two similarly voted last year against the contentious Gulf Gas Station signage design, which is located across the street on the same intersection.

Testa said the general plan is a guideline that establishes standards for the quality of life that the community expects and if it keeps getting ignored, the city could lose its unique character.

“That’s what this is about … maintaining a standard throughout our community,” Testa said.

That’s why she and Nibert supported staff’s original recommendation to deny the application entirely. Nibert pointed to the staff’s findings for denying the application and said that, as a council, they need to think “long and hard about overturning a staff decision that’s based upon the General Plan”.

“The downtown specific plan similarly calls for gateway treatments that create a sense of arrival, not a dominant corporate color field,” Testa said. “A canopy where nearly two thirds (of) the fascia is saturated with brand color does not meet that bar. Does not meet the standard established by our predecessors.”

She also said she’s not against businesses moving into Pleasanton, she just wants those businesses to respect the community standards and policies that “make Pleasanton the special place that it is.”

Luchini, however, pointed out how the Downtown Specific Plan doesn’t include much on signage, typically focuses on signs along Main Street and “definitely does not specifically address gas stations, canopy signs”.

Gaidos also said he went through the Downtown Specific Plan and agreed that there wasn’t much direction on signage.

“The term signage appears 32 times in the Downtown Specific Plan,” he said regarding the 223-page document. “Nowhere does it give any clear direction to anybody in this particular concept of putting signage on a gas station at this intersection.”

And while Councilmember Craig Eicher agreed with Testa that standards matter, he noted how those standards are subjective, which means it’s up to the current council to decide whether something like the rebrand is appropriate or not.

“It isn’t a clearly defined standard,” Eicher said.

Eicher also noted how the applicant went through the appropriate process and modified its application even further following the Planning Commission’s decision, which is why he supported that option.

“From a subjective perspective … I think it’s consistent with the General Plan or the Downtown Specific Plan,” Gaidos said.

At the end, Mayor Jack Balch was the deciding vote and was the one who made a motion to approve the sign design review based on the Planning Commission’s recommendations. 

He said while he agrees preserving the city’s General Plan is “extremely important”, the plan’s “inconsistent application of those rules” is challenging when the council has to decide between improving aging buildings and infrastructure while preserving Pleasanton’s downtown aesthetic.

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