A new restaurant located off Ga. Highway 54 West in Peachtree City will have to remove its sign because it ran afoul of the maximum size of 50 square feet.
The sign for My House restaurant, as measured by city staff, was some 58 square feet whereas the city ordinance limits it to no more than 50 square feet, the city council was told last week.
Representatives of the restaurant said the sign was initially submitted to the sign manufacturing company at 50 square feet, but to include the necessary lighting the size grew a little.
City Planner David Rast noted that the restaurant did not submit a sign permit application, and thus city staff opposed the requested variance.
The restaurant owner claimed that the city had the application but did not act on it. Even if that were the case, the ordinance is clear that no sign should be installed until the business has its sign permit in hand, said City Attorney Ted Meeker.
“This was up on the building when we saw it,” Rast said. “… Had we seen drawings we could have identified that earlier in the process.”
Rast added that he didn’t think the oversight was intentional on the restaurant’s part.
Council voted 4-1 to deny the variance. Councilman George Dienhart cast the lone vote against the denial.
Several questions were asked about recent sign variances that were approved. City staff noted that one of the variances was for the new Sany building in the industrial park, and it was approved because the large scale of the building which made the sign look minuscule in comparison.
It was also noted that the Sany sign is not visible from any public road.
Dienhart said he hated to see the My House owner create 32 jobs and invest his life savings only to have the city put him in the hole by enforcing the ordinance.
While the city does have some criteria that allows it to approve variances to the sign ordinance, none of them applied in this case, noted Councilman Eric Imker.
