The Villa Magna condo wants to improve its visibility along A1A, but current Highland Beach rules will not allow the bigger signs it wants. Tim Stepien/ The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
The challenges kept coming for a beachfront condo in Highland Beach as its board members attempted to upgrade the entrance signs near their driveways on State Road A1A.
The first challenge, though not totally unexpected, came when they met with town leaders and learned that the signs they hoped to put in were too big and didn’t meet code.
Then came the news that the town doesn’t have a process for granting a variance, and the only way for the condo, Villa Magna, to get the green light to improve the signage would be to have the Town Commission change an ordinance that’s been on the books for years — a cumbersome and slow-moving process.
While all that was happening, the Villa Magna team looked up and down A1A and saw that many of the signs in front of buildings — those with the names of the buildings and addresses — were bigger than allowed under the same code blocking their project.
Yet there they were.
“It appears they were non-compliant and had been that way for a long time with no town action,” said Town Manager Marshall Labadie, who sent Highland Beach’s code enforcement officer out to measure, confirming what Villa Magna had found.
The bigger condos, many with longer frontage on A1A, tended to have the larger signs, he said. Many of those signs exceed the allowed 10 square feet for the face of the sign.
When Villa Magna officials went checking, they found signs that were larger than the 10 square feet Highland Beach allows, including ones at the Ambassadors and at Highlands Place — and even one of Villa Magna’s own current signs. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
How that happened, Labadie says, might have been the result of Highland Beach’s not having a full-time town planner until 2018 and no one to ensure the bigger signs met code when they were installed.
Those signs that do not meet the code will be considered a lawful non-conforming use, Labadie said, meaning that they will be allowed to remain as is. If those signs are replaced, however, the new signs will need to comply with the code.
What that code will be in the future is up in the air.
Once Villa Magna’s leadership brought forward the problems with the current ordinance on permanent signs, town commissioners agreed to take a hard look at whether changes need to be made.
With Labadie calling Villa Magna “the canary in the coal mine” alerting officials to what may be considered an obsolete provision in the code, commissioners agreed to ask for a recommendation from the town’s planning board on whether to keep the ordinance as is or change it.
If the planning board agrees that the ordinance needs to be changed, it would have to consider issues such as how big the signs can be and whether a variance process is needed for condo boards like Villa Magna’s.
In bringing their case to the commission, representatives from the 92-unit condo said one of the main concerns is safety.
Villa Magna is just north of the Delray Sands Resort, and visitors often end up driving into Villa Magna’s driveways by mistake and then have to back out onto A1A.
The problem is magnified when the sun goes down, says Joan Stein, a longtime Villa Magna board member and a co-chair of the decorating committee that is involved in the signage project.
“It’s very difficult at night,” she said. “You don’t see the sign until you’re on it.”
Villa Magna, which has three signs on A1A, is asking for five signs, the biggest of which would be 24 square feet.
The condo has 370 linear feet of frontage on A1A and three driveways, and its leaders believe the size of the signs is in scale with the size of the property.
With the request requiring a change in the ordinance, the decision on what size new signs can be may take several more weeks.
“It’s going to take longer than we thought, but it’s worth the effort,” Stein said.
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