LeClaire, Iowa businesses aim to preserve their sandwich board signs

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By Kurt Allemeier | Saturday, May 03, 2008 | 59 comment(s)

Visitors check out The Toy Shoppe on Cody Road in LeClaire, Iowa. Sandwich boards like these along Cody Road aren’t allowed by Iowa Department of Transportation and the city, but some businesses want them to help direct visitors to shops not located along the main highway. (Kevin E. Schmidt/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo!

LeCLAIRE, Iowa — Sandwich board signs, an easy way to direct visitors to boutique shops off Cody Road, no longer cut the mustard with the city and the state.

The simple, portable signs are set up on sidewalks along LeClaire’s main highway by shop owners hoping to draw visitors to their stores on less-traveled streets.

“It is essential for us,” said Steve Henson, who has a sign along Cody Road pointing to his shop, Mississippi Cottage Antiques. “It is the only way to let people know we are there.”

Now the signs suddenly are running into opposition from the city and the Iowa Department of Transportation, which say they need to be removed because they don’t meet the rules.

Signs can’t be placed in the right-of-way, must be on private property and must follow specific size guidelines, unlike the moveable signs that dot Cody Road. Cody Road is LeClaire’s part of U.S. 67 as it winds along the Mississippi River.

Henson talked with a business owner on Cody Road who let him put his sandwich board sign on private property, but he doesn’t know if that is a permanent solution.

Some shop owners say the city opposes the signs because they hurt the town’s quaint ambiance. City Administrator Ed Choate said the signs have long violated the city’s sign ordinance and don’t follow IDOT’s sign regulations.

“We are trying to find a solution to it,” Choate said. “That is some of the complexity here — we have to blend the two together and see what will work.”

The city’s tourism board hopes to present a sandwich board solution to the City Council later this month. The issue is scheduled for discussion at Monday’s tourism commission meeting.

“For us, it is a survival technique and important to some of these businesses,” said Pam Ellis, of the tourism commission. “We need to find the best way to promote the businesses and make the city and IDOT happy.”

She thinks the signs came to IDOT’s attention last year during the Cody Road renovation and downtown streetscaping project.

The council would be interested in hearing possible solutions, Choate said, although it isn’t scheduled for council discussion in the immediate future.

Rich Henning, president of the tourism commission and owner of the LeClaire Happy Joe’s, doesn’t see much support from the city on the issue.

“The city just wants to be done with it,” he said. “I don’t use a sandwich board, but I am all for them. They need to retire the ordinance.”

Possible solutions the tourism commission is considering include centrally located kiosks to promote businesses and provide directions, signs mounted on downtown buildings directing visitors to shops away from Cody Road or uniformly designed sandwich boards.

“It might take some type of uniformity to make them fly,” Ellis said. “It is the individual sandwich boards that are the problem.”

Kurt Allemeier can be contacted at (563) 383-2360 or kallemeier@qctimes.com.