Commission considers golf club owner’s request for directional signs
By Barbara Lyon, Editor
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10:55 AM CDT
The Menomonie Plan Commission pulled unusually light duty during its March meeting. Monday evening’s agenda held only one item for the group to consider.
To help golfers and other find their way to his establishment, Ryan Parker, owner of the Menomonie Golf and Country Club, has requested permission from the city to have blue Tourist Oriented Directional Signs (TODS) placed near the intersections of Broadway and Pine Avenue and at U.S. Highway 12 and Heller Road.
Within the city limits, TODS already exist for Chippewa Valley Golf and Country Club, Dunn County Historical Society (Russell J. Rassbach museum), Motel Six and AmericInn motel. Businesses pay both an application (subject to renewal) and an installation fee.
Representing Parker at the meeting was John Waggoner, who explained, “Ryan has an application to the state. They’re allowing these kinds of signs on the freeway [interstate]. Before it was just motels, food and gas stations.”
Known as attraction signs, he noted that Parker’s plan is to erect signs along the east- and westbound lanes of Interstate 94 as well as at each offramp leading to State Highway 25.
“Once you get them off the offramp,” Waggoner said, “they won’t know where to go if you’re not familiar with Menomonie and where the golf course is.”
Public works director Randy Eide noted that in the past, the state wanted the local plan commission’s permission before granting its permission for interstate signage. Among several questions the commission raised during its discussion was whether that was still the case.
Examining the commission’s rules for the erections of TODS, city council and commission member Sue Beety pointed out that one of the qualifications requires a business, service or activity to be “of significant interest to the traveling public to the extent that 50 percent or more of its annual visitors or its annual gross income is derived from customers residing outside the immediate area.”
And so arose the commission’s second question of the evening. Beety asked that further data about the golf club’s clientele be collected before making a decision.
“Do you need to approve the 50 percent rule for your interstate signs?” asked city attorney Ken Schofield. “We could bootstrap our decision based upon whatever the state requires. If they don’t have a 50 percent rule, then we’re talking apples and oranges.”
Waggoner responded that the state indicated no problem in Parker’s getting the signs and did not refer to the 50 percent rule at all.
Admitting that the commission rarely encounters requests for TODS, city administrator Lowell Prange said, “I don’t know if they (the state) have upgraded or loosened or relaxed the rules. ... We can do some checking. It doesn’t make much sense to get them in the city without getting them off the freeway.”
Commissioner Charlie Kell recalled that when Chippewa Valley Golf Club made its request for TODS in 1999, employees collected zip code information from customers. “They used that data to prove that 50 percent or more was from out of the local area.”
Building inspector John Dahl registered his concern about how a tourist attraction is defined.
“That particular intersection that they want to put them in is an awful hectic one,” he said. “I kind of hate to see that loaded up with five or six or seven TODS.”
Eide explained that going north on Highway 25, a TODS would be placed across from the entrance to Taco John’s. Going southbound, the sign would be located in front of Walgreens. He noted that directional signs for Durand, Knapp and the museum are already located there.
“If this was approved, we’d have to get another signpost up there because we couldn’t put another directional sign there because it would be too low,” Eide said. “We’d probably put the historical society sign a little further north, because that’s a left turn, and we want to give (drivers) enough time to transition to the left lane.”
He added that for safety reasons, the regulations don’t allow for an overabundance of directional signs.
“It would be first-come, first-served as far as applications go,” Eide said.
Waggoner said that Parker’s concern is that if the commission does not approve the in-city TODS, “He doesn’t want to spend the money for the monthly fee for freeway and ramps. If he just has arrows going one way, it’s not going to do him much good.”
Noting that more information is needed before the plan commission can take action, chair Paul Peltier concluded that Parker will need to return with evidence that the golf club is a tourist-oriented attraction that satisfies the 50 percent rule.
Barbara Lyon can be reached at barbara.lyon@lee.net. |
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Frank Bank wrote on Mar 29, 2008 2:40 PM: