The Historic Preservation Commission of the City of Monroe met on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, at 1:00 PM in the Council Chambers. Present were Jeff Maliszewski, Lynne Kleven, Aaron Holverson, and Mary Soddy. Absent were Donna Bahler, Jordan Norby, and Tom Mitchell. The meeting lasted approximately 10 minutes and addressed two main agenda items: a Certificate of Appropriateness for new signage at Bank First (1625 10th Street) and a discussion on changing the regular meeting date/time.
I'll call the meeting to order. Roll call is that been taken. Okay, are there any corrections of minutes from February's meeting? Yeah. Hearing none, I'll move on. Um first idle item of business is approval of certificate of appropriateness for bank first. Um it looks like they're just rebranding. Well, the bank has been sold and they need all new signage for rebranding purposes. Um I guess my one item of discussion I have on it is they do have two signs that are backlit. And in the past, we have not allowed backlit signs at all. Um in fact, there is another bank on in our district that we made them go back to the drawing board, and they came up with a fine solution. But those were the only two signs I've had an issue with. In downtown there's enough light, you really don't need it, do you? Oh, sorry. Downtown there's enough light you don't really need it. I think that could be argued, but uh it is yeah. Maybe Aaron could it is part of the ordinance, I believe, that we can't within RR code, yeah, not ordinance code. Um that we don't allow backlit. So I know Jeff and um Shannon have looked at that, and I I guess I'm not quite sure if they've discussed that, but I know they've looked over the code and really didn't have any concern with friends with it. But if you guys have a concern about that, I can bring that up to them. Is backlit the same as having a light shining on a sign? Oh, so they could do that if they chose. Yeah, and I know they might maybe the argument is this is like a halo lit, it's not a backlit in that. I think it's kind of splitting hairs. I don't necessarily disagree that it's not identical, but it just for consistency's sake, I do wonder. I personally like the the sign with the we'll call it halo lighting. I like that term. Um it looks fine to me, but I also don't want to set it's that snowball effect where if you allow one person to do it, somebody's gonna be upset that they didn't get to do it. Um, or moving forward, they're gonna use it as well. How come so and so got to have backlit signs? So you said they reviewed it internally. Uh what was the comments on it as far as the lighting goes? Because I would agree, I don't mind the look of it. What I would say that uh I do know of other municipalities that have modified their sign ordinance, their historic district sign ordinance to allow for what I called halo lighting. I don't remember what it's what other others necessarily determine that's called because it's not really it's there is a difference, I guess. It's not just general lighting, it's the actual letter itself is glows. Yeah. So I know in your guys' packet they uh there's the um the zoning memo in there. And when it I guess it says external illuminated signs should be um basically the existing external illumination is proposed to remain. So I don't know if that's what they already have in place. They do not their current signs right now, um, are not lit. Um I know the bank, um I always forget the name of it. It was anchor bank. Uh whatever bank is down here on the corner. They came with signage that was backlit, and we proposed that they just had uh a sconce. Yeah, uplighting. And I think that's what they did. They just like put a sconce on top of the sign to light the sign. I would say for consistency sake, we kind of have to treat it the same way until maybe it's clarified more explicitly because it would be very easy, I think, to argue that this is still in some way backlighting. Even though I think we all agree that we're not necessarily opposed to how it looks.