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HomeMy WebLinkAboutcoa.lu.ca.Sign Code Special Events.A005-03 ~ CASE NUMBER PARCELID# CASE NAME, PROJECT ADDRESS PLANNER CASE TYPE OWNER/APPLICANT REPRESENTATIVE DA TE OF FINAL ACTION CITY COUNCIL ACTION PZ ACTION ADMIN ACTION BOA ACTION DATE CLOSED BY A005-03 Special Events - Sign Code Amendments Sarah Oates Amendment to Sign Code City of Aspen Kathryn Koch NONE ~ }t~~ 6'tL, ~~cr ~ ' +-oGvs,. c+ ~, ~ c.Jr!J-L-- S~S;1-~ t .. ~ ~~ MEMORANDUM TO: Mayor and City Council FROM: Kathryn Koch and the Special Events Committee DATE: January 17,2003 RE: Special Events in Aspen Work Session January 21,2003 at 4 p.m. The Special Event Committee met with Hana Pevny, ACRA, and Tom Rubel and I met with the CCLC to review and suggest some changes in Aspen's special event policies and some possible changes to the Aspen Municipal Code. These are outlined in the attached report "Special Events in Aspen" and memorandum from Sarah Oates "" '''''CC~\J'E'''''D RE'~~~ ~. ,g- JAN 1 7 2.003 ASPEN BUILDING DEPARTMENT 1 ~ '- SPECIAL EVENTS IN ASPEN STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS/COUNCIL DECISIONS: 1. The special event committee recommends up to 4 street closures/year upon our review. Any more would have to have Council review. Specific street closures up to discretion of special event committee 2. Leaving Wagner Park as a park and NOT allow any new events there 3. Sponsorship/signage . Amend Code to allow car placement/advertisement on public rights-of- way in connection with events . Amend sign policy to allow more sponsor signage upon public rights-of- way in connection with events . Amend light pole policy to allow banners on light poles within the commercial core (not Main street) to make downtown look more festive during events . . Larger issue of naming rights, official car, etc. of Aspen should be a Council decision SPECIAL EVENT COMMITTEE: Meets to review events with applicants to make sure all city regulations will be met and that the event is the best it can be for the organizers. Members Special Event Coordinator Kathryn Koch Risk Manager Peggy Carlson Assistant City Attorney David Hoefer Fire Marshal Ed Van Walraven Zoning Officer Sarah Oates Parks Department Tom Rubel, Steve Slack Recreation Department Susan Arenella, Keith Bulicz Community Safety Charlie Martin, Dave Paschal Parking Department Tim Ware Streets Department Willie McFarlin Environmental Health Jannette Whitcomb Engineering Department Richard Goulding RFT A Kent Blackmer Valley Partnership for Drug Prevention Bessie Harper 1. The special event committee recommends up to 4 street closures/year upon our review The issue facing SEP Committee/City Council is where to allow special events. Special events have generally been held in city parks. Council and the community are interested in having more/larger special events~ If Wagner and Rio Grande Parks are to 2 r\ '" be used as sports venues, increased use by special events would conflict with sports usage. Street closures have mostly been avoided. The SEP Committee recommended and Council allowed Mill and Hyman to be closed for the Olympic Torch festivities, this was a 5 or 6-hour closure. An event like a street fair would require 24 to 48 hour closures. The special event committee met with Hana Pevny, ACRA director, and the consensus was to experiment with events on closed city streets. CCLC also supports special events on the mall or closed city streets. Each block or two-block closure has its own concerns. The special event committee will review these. Since this is a new way to do business, the committee felt 4/year was enough and if there were a request for an outstanding event, Council could waive that limit. Street closure concerns: . CCLC suggests events that wish to close streets incorporate a shuttle or parking component to their event. Transportation staff can assist in determining whether an event's impact requires special shuttles. Non-profit events can often contract special event transportation through RFT A. However, RFT A does not always have the capacity to run special services, and they do need several weeks notice - this cannot be a last minute request. Several private transportation providers can also handle shuttle services for for-profit events. City Transportation staff can provide information about these private providers. . Parking revenues lost Cooper & Galena $812/day Hyman & Mill $518/day . ADA spaces and loading zones would have to be relocated . Durant Street should NEVER be closed, as it is major transportation street. . Aspen Street is also a major transportation route that we should avoid closing as most RFTAroutes turn from Durant onto Aspen as they head down valley. In addition, most RFT A buses use Spring Street as they return from down valley trips. . How do the adjacent merchants feel? We should require a petition signed by a predetermined percentage of street level businesses/residences in favor of the event BEFORE the special event meeting . A VFD is generally not in favor of street closures or booths in the mall due to limiting the fire access. Ed VanWalraven, fire marshal, said he could approve these with a safety access plan. The event must maintain adequate fire/emergency lanes . Farmer's market is on one block ofthe town every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. 3 ~ " s Leaving Wagner Park as a park Recreation - the city does not have enough ball fields as is. Parks - a big concern is providing the public with a safe playing field a.) City can be held personally liable for unsafe playing surface. b.) Do we make Wagner Park an event field only? If so, do we rebuild Rio Grande and find another site to replace Wagner and possibly add more ball fields? c.) Cost to rehabilitate field between events - $2500 materials, $1100 labor plus the fact we won't be able to do some other regular maintenance. CCLC supports keeping parks as a park. One can have events on a closed street but one can't play rugby in the streets. Should be considered on an event by event basis but Wagner should not be considered an "event venue~ 2. -. Consider cost of "artificial turf' that could. accommodate both sport~ and events. Any "artificial turf' area would have to permanently fenced ~ Should we investigate purchasing flooring to be rented to event organizers. Tom Rubel is investigating cost of flooring and possible storage locations. Rio Grande has 261 events from April to November including adult and youth soccer, rugby practice and league games, Lacrosse Wagner park has 100 events which also include adult softball, United Soccer Club, adult flag football and lacrosse tournament. 3. Signage/Sponsorship Commercial sponsorship is crucial to the success of many special events. The city's adopted sign policy limits the exposure of commercial sponsors. G ~ X a) Car placement. This is a frequent request of staffto allow a type of car J'.i:. Cc. / parKed in a certain location with signs stating "Nash Rambler Presents Winterskol". Staff~ /' has generally turned all of these down. We recommend allowing this and that the special ~ L~ event committee develops acceptable locations, length, cost and other criteria. A code ~ / ~ <:" amendment will be brought to Council if necessary. ~"< "-..... \.A,) Signs in public rights-of-way in connection with specific events. We reco~end amending 26.510, Sign Code, to allow more sponsor signage at the special events. We suggest up to three signs for title sponsor and one sign for iess$.sponsors at the event venue itself. ;~ )(::,) Banners on light poles in commercial core. We recommend allowing an event to hang banners from light poles in the commercial core on two streets of their choice (banner brackets are on DllfaIlt, Hyman A venue, Hunter and Monarch) for a total of five days ~/ ~Vv'r--rtDUv'~ 'r\. dl ~~ '2fb _ ~) ;::;: ~re';:;::7?o;F;:I c~lls;~r~ C~~ decision "-') ~ (Y~ 1~6JM ~') r-:c:> ~Z- Q'r)6\ou-.-;;O 4 0. H,~ f/cp~ Qj: ~ "'"", 9> ~~ 1)-" ~~ (~ r') '- CRITERIA FOR EVENTS: . How much revenue does it bring to the city vs. cost to City of Aspen to hold . Proposed demographics of visitors . Aimed at local vs. bringing people to Aspen . Size of event . Is the event open to all members of the community and accessible to disabled . Do any local non-profits benefit . Is the location requested reasonably suited for the event including handicap accessibility, fire access, exits, etc. . Sponsorship and signage . How it affects other events on same venue . Duration . Impact on time of city staff and city facility including setup and cleanup 5 ~ MEMORANDUM TO: Mayor and City Council THRU: Steve Barwick, City Manager Julie Ann Woods, Community Development Director FROM: Sarah Oates, Zoning Officer DATE: January 21,2003 SUBJECT: Special Events Worksession___Sign Code and Policies The City of Aspen has a strict sign code and set of policies regarding temporary signs for special events taking place on City property. The sign code states that: temporary banners, pennants, streamers, and balloons or other gas-filled figures advertising a special campaign, drive, activity or event of a civic, philanthropic, educational, or religious organization for noncommercial purposes are allowed but any commercial signs must go through a permitting process and are prohibited from being displayed off-site (i.e. Boogies Diner cannot put a big sign on Main Street). Further, signage on public property must be approved by City Council. The above elements were wrapped up in the Policies Regarding Signage on Public Property which was adopted last year by City Council. The policies did not create a more liberal sign code but simply outlined what the City deemed acceptable on public property in terms of signs. This policy sets standards for signs in parks, on the Main St. light posts and on public right-of-ways based on the sign code. Prior to the policy, staff set precedent by allowing events such as Ducky Derby, World Cup, etc. to place signs on public property which contained a limited commercial element. For example, we allow the US Bank logo on the Ducky Derby banner and on the duck and sales booth on the mall, but we have always told organizers of special events the commercial elementmust be secondary to the advertisement of the event itself. Chevy cannot place "Chevy" banners all over town during World Cup, they can only advertise in association with th~ event itself. Hana Pevny, President of ACRA, has spoken with the Special Events Committee regarding the constraints our sign code and policies place on attracting sponsors for special events. Hana has suggested that we should look at a modification to the. code that would create an environm.ent in which the advertising potential is more attractive to potential sponsors. One idea is to create a certain number of "exempt" events each year which would not have to comply with the code. In order for this to happen several steps need to be taken related to the sign code and policies, including: ~ ~ Revisions to the sign code section of the Aspen Municipal Code andthe Policies Regarding Signage on Public Property. ' . 6 ~ ~ ~ Increased education and communication with event organizers and adequate enforcement so that events that are nc;>t exempt strictly comply with the code. Given these two items above, Council needs to provide staff a clearly defined concept of what degree the City is willing to exempt the events so that new standards can be formulated. The Special Events Committee believes tha! the sign code and policies could be modified to allow for more fle)(ibility in terms of commercial signs. One example of this is the Ruggerfest. Based on our sign code and policies, the organizers were told that Coors could not advertise with banners at the event and consequently Coors pulled out as a sponsor. The Special Events Committee realizes that finding sponsorship for events such as Ruggerfest, skateboard contests, etc. is a challenge and would like to see some level of advertisement allowed without creating an environment in which sponsorships overshadow events themselves. 7