~Amy Donahue
signage consultant
PANAMA CITY BEACH — The City Council has agreed to a compromise on animated signs in the city — the last piece of a complicated ordinance members have been tussling with for more than a year.
The new ordinance, approved on first reading Thursday, is “the first real major overhaul” of the city’s sign ordinance since the current rules were put in place in the late 1990s, Mel Leonard, city director of planning and building, said Friday.
The compromise will permit large moving images along the beach but not in other areas of the city, such as Back Beach Road, while allowing the city to manage the rush of modern technology that threatens to swamp the landscape in bright lights and moving digital images, Leonard said. The city has also had to wrestle with the many First Amendment concerns that limiting signs can cause, Leonard said. “That really complicated the matter,” he said.
The new ordinance, which must be given final approval at a later meeting, would allow animated signs in the city limits along Front Beach Road, South Thomas Drive and Thomas Drive. Officials had been concerned that animated digital signs, like large television screens, could pose a safety hazard as drivers swivel their heads to watch the show.
The compromise was reached because traffic is generally slower along the beach, “where there is more of a tolerance for the glitch and fun,” Leonard told council members. In addition, such signs along Front Beach Road can also help add to the experience of tourists, who are often looking for the “flashing lights and fun” of a special vacation, he said Friday.
The signs must be at least 9 feet tall, but no more than 50 feet tall, with a square footage not to exceed 2 square feet per each foot of property frontage along the roadway, not to exceed 300 square feet. A shopping center would be allowed only one sign for the entire complex, unless it fronts two roadways, in which case it would be allowed two such signs.
Animated signs already within the city limits, but not along the beach, must cease the animation within three years. Such signs would not have to be taken down, but the illumination would have to switch to “stop-and-go” images with pauses in between. “You just can’t have the motion,” Leonard said.
The new ordinance also set limits to the amount of illumination a sign brings to the landscape, measured in the amount of “nits” (units) of light emitted from every square meter of surface.
Signs cannot exceed 7,000 nits during the day or 500 nits at night, and the city will now purchase a $3,000 light gun for the measuring, Leonard said.
