Council calls meeting over gas station sign

A large pole has been installed at the BP gas station on the corner of Lakeshore Drive and Columbiana Road. It is intended to support an electronic billboard, but the Homewood City Council wants to stop the sign before it happens.

On Friday, March 6 at noon, the council is holding a special-called meeting to pass a resolution against the gas station sign. The BP property is considered part of unincorporated Jefferson County, not the city of Homewood, so the council cannot stop the electronic billboard’s installation outright. However, Ward 1 Place 2 Representative Britt Thames said he hopes that the resolution and working with the Jefferson County Commission will be effective.

“The city council has spent over the years, I think, about $4 million on the Green Springs corridor just trying to improve that,” Thames said. “It’s just the antithesis of everything we’re trying to do there.”

Jefferson County District 5 Commissioner David Carrington said in a prepared statement that the proposed billboard did not come before the commission for review or approval. It was submitted to the county’s land planning department, and the staff “had no option other than to issue the permit as the proposed structure satisfied all the requirements for permitting such structures.”

Carrington said he personally opposes electronic billboards and is coordinating a meeting with the property owner and Mayor Scott McBrayer

The owner of the BP station was not immediately reachable by phone.

For many residents, the sign post seemed to appear without any notice. Tony Derriso, who lives near Patriot Park, said he was surprised to see a crane hoisting a 30-foot pole at the gas station as he drove by on Wednesday, March 4. Forest Brook resident Mike Higginbotham also saw the installation and had no idea of its purpose until he saw others’ Facebook comments.

“I never heard a single thing about this sign,” agreed Oak Grove resident and former council member Joe Falconer. “It came out of nowhere.”

Many West Homewood residents are concerned about the sign’s impact. Higginbotham is a realtor and said he has seen large billboards decreasing house resale values in other cities. He said the county commission should not approve the sign because the lower home values will also take away from the county’s property tax collection.

“Billboards are economic drags when it comes to the resale values of homes,” Higginbotham said. “I think it will be ugly and distracting and a blight on the community.”

Since the sign is intended to be visible from I-65, it is likely to tower over the existing homes and trees. South Lakeshore resident Leigh Lewis said she can already see the post from her home before the electronic sign has even been installed.

“I'm afraid the height of it will clear the tree line making it visible even during the warm months when the trees are leafed out,” Lewis said.

Derriso said the idea of an electronic sign is not necessarily bad, but the gas station should take its surroundings into consideration. The Lakeshore-Columbiana intersection is landscaped and has sidewalks, and he believes a towering sign will ruin the intersection’s appearance.

“To me it’s a matter of aesthetics,” Derriso said. “It’s not that I think all signs are bad. It’s a matter of whether something fits.”

Falconer, a 41-year resident of Homewood, said neighborhoods like Edgewood prove that businesses and homes can coexist if planned properly, but he believes an electronic sign will simply be a nuisance.

“This is not aesthetically good for our neighborhood,” Falconer said. “There’s just got to be a better way to do it.”

With one portion of the pole already installed, Derriso thinks it may be too late to get the electronic sign denied. However, even if the city council’s resolution does not work, he thinks it will be an opportunity to “shore up the city’s boundaries” and prevent the situation from occurring again.

“Doing something about this sign is definitely an uphill battle,” Derriso said.