Cornelia City Council members voted Tuesday to extend the current moratorium on permits for new signs through July 8. By then, Leaders hope to have new regulations in place governing the types of signs businesses would be allowed to erect.
The question of how to regulate signage is not a new problem for Cornelia. Back in 2012, a dispute over billboards downtown almost landed the city in court. Leaders settled the issue and allowed those permits but they want to avoid that type of conflict in future.
City staff is working on a new sign ordinance and at the same time City Attorney Steve Campbell is working on three zoning overlay districts. He hopes the new mapping will make it clear to businesses what types of signs are allowed in various parts of Cornelia. Campbell says the area in red covers the downtown business district, “You’ll probably only have hanging signs, you’re not going to have billboards or any of that kind of signage.”
The other two overlay districts are transitional, “You’ll have monument signs out here,” Campbell says, pointing to the yellow section that follows Level Grove Road, “They won’t be very high and would have a brick base or something like that.” The blue section out along North Main Street toward Wal-Mart would have similar regulations, “as you get further out this way there would be more allowed because it gets into an area of larger scale commercial uses.”
Right now, Campbell says the overlay is just for the signage issue but he sees an opportunity to make general zoning in Cornelia more uniform, especially in the downtown core. “What we have currently is different zoning for individual buildings meaning businesses 50 feet apart could have different rules. We need something to bring all these businesses together.”
Campbell expects to have both the new sign ordinance and the new overlay districts ready for City Council at their regular monthly meeting in July. There will be a chance at that time for the public to comment on the planned changes.
