Agenda - Planning Commission - 06/02/1998

Home

Z.B. May 25, t998 -- Page 3 The district court's order was affirmed insofar as it prevented the city from requiring Video Update to alter its service mark by changing the color of the mark's lettering. The court should not, however, have prevented the city from prohibiting Blockbuster's awning. Allowing the city to regulate storefront signs in the way it wanted would allow the city to require a change in both companies' service marks. If Video Update and Blockbuster were required:to change their service marks to a turquoise and white sign in one shopping center and a pink and white sign in another, there would be no uniform mark for customers to identify. Customers who saw a store with a pink and white sign instead of the nationally recognized blue and yellow Blockbuster service mark might think the store wasn't a real Blockbuster store. Although Congress meant to limit the extent to which the Act infringed upon a state's zoning powers by limiting the Act to prohibiting any alteration of a service mark itself, states or municipalities remained free to regulate where signs could be placed and how large they could be. see also: Century 21 Real Estate Corp. v. Nevada Real Estate Advisory Commission, 448 F. Supp. 1237 (1978). Signs -- Must nonconforming sign be remov'ed upon c. hange of business? Citation: Rogers v. Zoning Board of Adjustment of the Fillage of Ridgewood~ Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, No. A-5410-96T3 (1998) Rogers owned a retail building in the village of Ridgewood, N.J. An insurance company x;ented the building, and a sign in front of the building had carried the insurance company's message for more than 27 years. The village adopted a sign ordinance that rendered the insurance company's sign nonconforming. The ordinance required free-standing signs to be 40 feet from the building, and the insurance company's was only 28 feet away. The ordinance limited the height of signs to 10 feet and their area to 12 square feet; this sign was almost 14 feet high and had an area of 31.5 square feet. The insurance company left .the building several years after the village adopted the ordinance, and Rogers leased it to a tenant who wanted to open a nail salon. Rogers asked the village zoning officer for permission to keep the insurance company's sign while changing its message to something more ap- propriate to the nail salon. The zoning officer denied his request. Rogers asked the zoning board to determine that the sign was a protected nonconforming use that could be changed to reflect a new business, or for a variance permitting him to do so. The board denied both Rogers' requests, and Rogers appealed to court. While Rogers' appeal was pending, the village amended its sign ordinance to prohibit changing the message on any nonconforming signs. Under state law, the amendment applied to Rogers' sign even though he had filed his zoning request before the amendment was passed.