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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: MAY 25, 2000

Council cuts Evergreen sign down to size

By DAVID BATES
Of the News-Register

Evergreen International Aviation sought city permission Tuesday for an electronic sign on Three Mile Lane that would be "in direct relationship to the size of the museum" now under construction there. But the McMinnville City Council chopped the idea down to size in a hurry.

Councilor Dave Hughes seemed to speak for his colleagues as well when he said, "I'm not in favor of revisiting the sign ordinance on Three Mile Lane unless we're revisiting it to make it stricter. If you can't see the building, you shouldn't be driving."

Actually, the rules couldn't get much tougher.

In the meadow where the towering glass and steel of the Captain Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Educational Institute is going up, free-standing signs are prohibited outright, regardless of size. The council said "no" to free-standing signs along Three Mile Lane in 1994, when it approved tougher sign ordinances for the city as a whole.

On behalf of Evergreen, the Tualatin-based Young Electric Sign Company had petitioned the city to make an exception.

Its plans called for a sign 30-feet tall and 14-feet wide set back 200 feet from the Spruce Goose's new digs on Highway 18. The sign was to feature an electronic media board displaying, along with information about events and hours, film clips of the Spruce Goose.

"It would be hard to miss," said City Planning Director Doug Montgomery.

But the council that gave Evergreen a break on a complicated land-use matter earlier this year wasn't inclined to give it another break on the sign matter. Montgomery said city rules would allow Evergreen to substitute a sign on the building itself or a monument-style sign similar to the one put up across the highway by the Willamette Valley Medical Center.

Raymond Brayton, Evergreen's account manager at Young Electric, said the council's decision was "unfortunate" and that he hadn't checked yet with his client as to how they would proceed.

"It's really going to be quite a setback for the people out there at Evergreen," he said.

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