City puts stop to strobing lights on motel sign

Posted 1/17/19

An upgrade to the Park Motel’s welcome sign proved to be a little too flashy for the City of Powell. In response to complaints, city officials recently ordered the motel to stop the …

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City puts stop to strobing lights on motel sign

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An upgrade to the Park Motel’s welcome sign proved to be a little too flashy for the City of Powell. In response to complaints, city officials recently ordered the motel to stop the sign’s lights from flashing.

Park Motel managers had swapped out the sign’s old light bulbs for new LEDs last August, as part of a series of improvements to the property.

Park Motel Manager Bernie Leichner said the new lights quickly boosted business at the 18-unit motel, located on East Second Street.

“It made the whole place look welcoming and inviting,” Leichner told the Powell City Council last week.

However, some passersby didn’t appreciate the brightness of the sign (illuminated by a couple dozen 60-watt equivalent LEDs) and its flashing. While the 1963 sign has always featured a kind of strobe light effect, it became much more noticeable after the brighter bulbs were installed.

“I remember driving by, going to the pool early in the morning ... boy, you can’t ignore it,” Powell City Administrator Zane Logan said, to laugher.

“No,” Leichner agreed with a chuckle. “Everybody sees it.”

After receiving a “handful” of complaints, City Building Official Ben Hubbard told the Park Motel to remove the “strobe lights” in mid-December. Hubbard said the sign violated two sections of Powell’s Municipal Code: one that prohibits signs that direct light onto a public right-of-way and another that bans flashing/blinking effects. (Time and temperature and readerboard-type signs are exempted from the prohibition on flashing.)

Leichner immediately shut off the sign on Dec. 17 — and she said the Park Motel’s business plummeted. From then until the council’s Jan. 7 meeting, only one guest checked in, she said.

“It’s really ruining the business,” Leichner told the council, asking for direction and help.

Since the sign’s flashing features are roughly 55 years old, she asked if they could be grandfathered in and exempted from the ordinances. However, Mayor John Wetzel and City Attorney Sandee Kitchen said the sign has never met city code.

Leichner suggested switching back to dimmer bulbs — offering to ditch the more than $300 worth of LED bulbs she’d purchased. But Councilman Scott Mangold said he believes there’s no issue with the sign’s brightness, just with the flashing.

“Sometimes strobes and flashing lights do affect some people,” Mangold said, alluding to the fact that such lights can trigger seizures among those with certain types of epilepsy.

“I think that’s basically more of a health issue for some people — and of course you guys do have some neighbors over there,” Mangold said, adding later that, “If we had a whole bunch of businesses [with] all of these flashing lights, it’d be sort of a problem for us.”

Administrator Logan said bypassing the motor that causes the Park Motel’s sign to flash should be relatively simple — and even save some costs on electricity, which was one of Leichner’s goals in switching to LEDs.

She was agreeable to turning off the flashing mechanism, sharing that she’d had a couple people refer to her business as “the seizure motel.”

“I thought, well, we can’t have that, because we don’t want anybody that has epilepsy going through a seizure because of our sign,” Leichner said.

Earlier, Councilman Steve Lensegrav quizzed Hubbard, the building official, about whether the non-flashing sign might still run afoul of a city ordinance prohibiting “excessive concentration of illumination.”

“Are you OK with this sign being as bright as it is, just on all the time?” Lensegrav asked. “I mean, is that too much illumination?”

“I’m willing to give it a shot,” Hubbard replied. “I think giving it a try is the answer.”

He added that, “In my experience here, … if we don’t get complaints, it’s probably alright.”

At the outset of her comments to the council, Leichner said the new light bulbs were part of many efforts she’s made to restore the Park Motel.

“We got rid of all the garbage that was in there and are going through and cleaning it up and painting all the rooms, putting new beds in — fixing it up to where it was years ago,” Leichner said.

The motel developed a poor reputation over multiple drug-related incidents in years past, but “there’s no more drugs in there. That’s all been cleaned up,” Leichner told the council, adding that she also “took out all the freeloaders.”

She said business has been improving.

“I just want to get this to be a successful motel again,” Leichner said.

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