Design Review Board - Regular Meeting

Should I close that door perhaps?

Okay, we're live on YouTube. All right. Okay. Just to double check, can you all hear me right now, Kelly Dodson? Yep. But we're gonna we're gonna mute you until the meeting uh your portion of the meeting. I'm going to call the uh meeting of the Bloomfield Design Review Commission Board to order at 6 PM. For the record, I'm Rebecca Jones, recording secretary for the building and land use department. Director John Coleman is sick and unable to join us this evening. Assistant Director Linda Lauraniano is on Zoom. The first order of business is the election of officers. I will now entertain nominations for chairperson.

I move that Mark Weisman be elected as chairperson. Is there a second? I'll second that. Motion has been made and seconded to nominate Mark Wisman. Are there any further nominations? Hearing none, I will now entertain a motion to close nominations. So moved. A second please. The nomination before us is Mr. Wiseman for chair. All in favor, please say a a a.

I will now entertain nominations for vice chairperson. I nominate Neil Clark for co-chair. Is there a second? I will second that. Motion has been made and seconded to nominate Neil Clark. Are there further nominations? Hearing none, I will now entertain a motion to close nominations. I move to close nominations. The nomination before us is Mr. Clark for vice chair. All in favor say I. I. I. We will now move on to the regular meeting and I will hand it over to you chair.

Okay. Thank you Rebecca. Thank you Neil for the nomination and thanks for uh being vice chair. Um I just wanted to um welcome our two new members Steve Dwey and Dale Berldi. Um nice to have you with us and um we're happy to be a part of this. Great. Great. I I I I just want to say how much we miss uh David Man

very much very much and hopefully I learned something from him over the years. So um okay so we have attendance taken already. Uh we're going to be not approving minutes from April 3rd I see on our agenda. And so we have our schedule in front of us for 2026 for meeting dates. And um could I just interject one? I mentioned it to Rebecca several times that's in your emails that the most unfortunate thing happened that I am executive director of Ironwood Community Partners and our meeting starts at normally at 5:15 tonight.

We cancelled tonight's meeting. I am in all my best efforts to move that meeting forward in time, but we have one of our board members who comes from an insurance company and she has a hard time making it. So I am going to try to move it 15 minutes to 30 minutes forward and so I can always make this meeting but if I'm a little bit late for the meeting that is the reason why I I I don't think I can really ask them to change the date. I've tried it and we there's there's nine of us in that board and it's not going to be very easy to move nine people when we've arrived at this time for like several years. Okay. May maybe effort. Go ahead, Neil.

Yeah, maybe it's easy enough for us to change ours to 6:15. It's only the few of us, not nine people that have to budge. That that would be a help to me and and and therefore you don't change your days. If that's acceptable to everybody here, then it's the easiest thing for me to do because then we work both ends and I think I can it makes work. We'll try to have our meetings at the new library hopefully and that means I can walk across the street so I don't have a drive time. Okay. Um, thanks for that suggestion, Neil. Um, any other discussion on that? Is that Steve? You good with that with 6:15? Fine.

Okay. All right. Um, how about how about a make this official? How about a motion to uh amend our um schedule 2026 schedule to meet at 6:15 instead of 6:00? So moved. Moved by Neil, seconded by Dale. Thank you. Any other discussion on that? All right. All in favor of the motion, please say I. I. Chair votes I. So, all right. Appreciate it. No. Thank you for your accommodations. And I'm gonna move my I'm gonna move my meeting up as much as I can our board can bear. And I think it's at least 15 to 20 minutes. And I think we'll work it out fine. And

and I think with only four of us at this point, you know, we can be fairly flexible with that as long as we give Rebecca and the planners enough notice um you know of change. Yeah. Um we we can do that. It would it would I believe it would become a special meeting at that point, but that's logistics. We can work through that. Okay. And then if there's a public representation from any projects, as long as they are informed of that time change, that I think would work fine, right? And I I think that's what you want to do is make sure that anybody who wants to be heard that evening can be told. Yeah. Exactly. Thank you.

Okay. And and I you know I we had a motion to change it to 6:15, but we really need a motion to accept the entire um schedule for 2026 at 6:15. first Thursday of every month as far as I saw. Am I miscorrecting that? I think that's exactly what I Except for April. Oh, except for April. Okay. I didn't see that. There's a holiday there. Okay. Gotcha. All right. So, do we have a motion to um approve this as amended? So moved. 26 meeting schedule dates as presented with the reision of the time.

All right. Moved by Steve and Neil has seconded. Thank you. Any other discussion? All in favor of the motion, please say I. I. Chair votes I. Okay. We have adopted a schedule for next year. Um, you know, normally our uh we do not have a meeting. It's if there's no agenda items, you know, nothing to review or none of none of our own met. That's my my concern. Also, we do meet monthly. We skip this month, but we do meet monthly except for this one in June. But yeah, so I didn't know how often you met. We are available the first Thursday of every right. We probably met I don't know four times last year. I want to say something like that.

Okay. Good. All right. Thank you for that. So with that, let's go. Um second item on new business is um signage at 12 Senica Road. Rebecca, who do we who do we have here? I'm going to introduce Kelly Dodson of I believe Sinewiz here to share information. Kelly, are you with us? I am. And my husband Chris Dodson is also here with us because he's the installer. So, if there's any questions on how the sign is being put onto the building, um he's going to be the expert in that to answer those. Can Can I ask a question, Kelly? Sure. Are are you the owner of the property or are you the sign company? Oh, we're the sign company.

And what's the name of your company? Sign Wiz Signs and Graphics. And we're in Rocky Hill. Okay. And who who are you representing? What is her name again now? Uh gee, it's Elite I'm sorry. Leticia. Leticia. What is her last name? I don't know. Gilbert, maybe. Um, but it's elite massage and wellness. Sorry, we just came back from another install, so we had a lot of signs. Oh, that's okay. We just need to kind of cross some te's and dot eyes to get Yep. the ball. Sure. Thank you.

Do you need her last name because I can get it for you. Do you need Leticia's last name? I think Linda probably has it in the application. Yeah, it for the record. All right. Thank you.

Hi. Um, good evening, commissioners. Linda Lauriano. Um, I I I believe it's Williams. I don't have the application in front of me. I did speak with the business owner who also happens to be the property owner. Um, she did come into the office. Um, and Kelly, are you able to share your screen um to uh to kind of show the the board uh the proposed side?

Sure. And I actually, if I can figure this out, I got to just find the share button. But I have the a couple of files on my laptop here that I wanted to share and that might be helpful. Oh, I found the share thing. Okay, great. Let's see if I can just do this correctly. So bear with me if I lose you. Sure. And Kelly, while you share it, um it's important to know um or you know, just tell the board uh what the materials are uh made up, you know, the sign is made up of. Okay. Yep.

All right. Um so I might have to minimize this screen. Let's see. Maybe I can slide it over. if you're unable to. You got it. Well, I'm just I'm just trying to get to my laptop and I don't want to I'm I'm afraid if I close something I might end up dropping out of this meeting. Um I can share it. Um there we go. We can see it.

Commissioners. Yeah. Uh so this is the sign. Um you have um 45.18 square feet of signage in the front. Um I don't have the exact uh how many uh feet the frontages, but you get two square feet per linear foot of frontage. Um there was a sign there prior. Uh it was not illuminated. Uh but the size is is comparable to what was there before. Um the lumens and the uh this illuminated sign is 5,000 Kelvin. Um and you know I'm not sure with the type of vinyl on how transparent you know it it's it is. So my only recommendation um to the sign company and to the business owner was to uh ensure that the sign has a is dimmable. Uh just in case um you know we we number one get complaints that it's too bright. Um we're we're able to have them dim it at least one to 2,000 Kelvin

Kelvin or lumens you were talking about. Well, depending on Right. What are your The lumens is 5,000, but it's measured by the I believe by Kelvin's. Okay. Because I had gotten the lumens for the sign. I actually got it from the um LED the LED manufacturers, right? Yeah. They're they sent me the actual pattern which I wanted for the LEDs which had all the lumens and everything and I a math uh equation to figure it out and it was just under 2500 lumens. So it was like 2350 um lumens. So

when you call it lumens, okay, they're not measured. Okay. Yeah. And I and some of the the you know some of the letters like the ones with the darker purple and all that they actually will shine less bright um because it's a darker color. So you know you won't see that as a real bright white. Okay. Um Kelly, can you can you walk just walk us through the materials uh briefly?

Sure. So, the sign is constructed of they're aluminum cans or channel letters people want to call that. They're internally lit um with LEDs and power supplies for those. And on the face, it's an acrylic face. Well, well, Lexan.

Lexan. Yeah, it's a little bit more durable than acrylic. Um which lets light shine through. And then there's a translucent vinyl um graphics applied to that Lexan face so that the light shines through and it gives you colors or no color if you don't want color. Um, then the whole thing is actually flush mounted to the building and it's going to be hooked hooked up to existing because the electrician's going to handle that. Hooked up to their existing um there's power up there from the old sign.

Yeah. And Chris said that the old sign was lit. So I just don't It was lit actually with uh genuine neon. Oh, neon he said it was. Yeah. So, there is power up there and they just tie into it um from the uh electrical box inside that's there. All right. Why don't we why don't we go around um with questions or comments? Um Neil, you want to start?

Sure. Um just so I understand how the graphics work. uh that white circle with the uh um I guess there sort of graphic hands in the that floral burst in the middle. Yeah, like a lotus or Yeah. Yeah. Um are those colors on the white silk screened on there or are they painted on or are they actually acrylic or lexan? the the graphics are they're on a lexan sheet which is white.

So no, the graphics are printed on a translucent vinyl which is then applied to the lens. Each one of those graph each one of those uh pieces of the of of the sign has a clear or actually a white face on it and then the graphics are actually applied to the white faces. Right. And the translucent vinyl, it's like a big sticker dal, you know, it's sticky on the other side. So, it's it's applied onto it almost like wallpaper, but it's translucent, so the light will shine through.

And in your experience, that stuff stays put, doesn't peel off or degrade over time. Oh, yeah. That's that's I mean, depending on You mean grade material? Yeah, it's sign grade material. It's meant to last. Yeah. And that I mean if if there was direct sunlight, there might be some fading of the color, but it's not going to degrade the it's all 3M material. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And and the color on the purple though, that's a Lexan color. No, that's vinyl. No, that's also that's vinyl again. That's a purple translucent vinyl. Okay. On top of

How about the letters that say massage and Wellness? It's the same exact thing. It's like it's like that lotus, but it's just words. And so, it's going to be the green massage and wellness, and it's printed on this translucent vinyl that's then applied to the Lexan. Okay. All right. That's That's sign painters don't have to do this stuff anymore. You just No. No.

Peel and stick, I think. But it looks, you know, nice and clean look. Um, my only concern about, you know, is permanence. I guess the the sign looks okay to me. I'm glad that Linda And have you committed to having the sign dimmable in case you have problems with brightness?

Yes, that that was not a problem. We may even just do that prior to even putting the sign up. It's just a it's just an attachment to the inside of the can. Okay. Um, okay. Those are my only questions. Linda's done her due diligence and making sure that it meets the criteria for the um for the code. So, uh, it's it's an it's a nice looking sign. Personally, I'd like to see it smaller, but if you're within the regulation, the other thing I would I would ask though, because you've got that big number 12 there, uh maybe talk the owner into applying some color vinyl to that that matches the the sign. That's just something I would do personally to make it kind of pull together. But apart from that, I see that the number 12 is part of the color scheme of the building, which is okay. Just just a little little critical comment. That's all.

Those are kind of their colors is the purple, the light green, and the dark green. So, she's kind of Yeah, she painted the banisters and the window trim and the number to be the darker green. So, and the on the roof line that's green. Okay. I'm not sure. It is. It's a It's like a dark darker green. It's not a evergreen or forest green, but it's darker than the massage and wellness green. So, okay. On my on my screen, it's dark brown. Looks like chocolate. Yeah, it does look kind of like that. But yeah, it's been painted. That's a different It's been painted. Yeah. Oh,

it's been painted green. The the trim of the the facade as far as I know. Yeah, because this I don't have the one that in on my sample. I'm looking at this and it's green and it's the same thing that's on your screen right there. It's the same um art or the same photo, the same picture. So, I don't know why it looks kind of gray on my screen here, but that's the color that Yeah, that was used. I guess it was an older picture. Um, are my question is I'm sorry I don't mean to. Are all the other trims going to be green as well or um I

I I thought I'm pretty sure she said she had painted and I think she said it was painted green, but I have not been to this building. My husband went up there to talk to her when she was initially starting. Um, you know, that's how we snapped the pictures and all that and then we just superimposed the sign onto the building so she could see it and you could see it. So, I guess the other question I have is how deep are the um letters? Three inches. Oh, yeah. They're three inches deep. Three inches. Okay. All the even the circles. Yeah. Okay. And one last question.

We've had this come up before. Are there any visible um attachment or is it nice and clean like this? No. What you see is what you get. Okay. Okay. All right. You good, Neil? I'm good. Thank you.

Okay. All right. Um then, uh I think we'll go down to to Steve here, but I just wanted to um uh sort of brief our our new members here that, you know, we're an advisory to to the uh planning and zoning commission. Um, and so as Neil already said, uh, all applicants have to go through and meet planning and zoning requirements, you know, so as far as the size of it and all that, that's not really our jurisdiction, you know, unless it's blatant and we, you know, have a problem or, you know, but basically they're going to go through planning and zoning as well. So, um, you know, we get to comment on all the other aspects

aspects of it. Sure. Okay. So, all right, Steve.

All right. Um, yeah. So, I I guess we we started talking about it and a little I don't know if it's confusion, but what the background is actually going to look like. I mean, right now, the sign really stands out and has a has a good effect as signage, but not if if all the trim is going to be a darker color or or a color in itself. Um, it kind of might take away a little bit from that. Um, so I'm just a little curious on what that end result might be. Um, but uh more specific to the signage, you know, I know lighting has come a long way. Um, you know, the old signage would have like a fluorescent tube in there and it would start flickering and and being somewhat of an eyesore in the future, but is is this the interior lighting? Is it like a strip lighting that is, you know, going to get full coverage and it's just going to be a glow? Um, are the and then kind of a follow-up. Are there chances that it, you know, could start flickering or or is it kind of a allon alloff scenario?

It's an allon, all off situation with the LEDs and they last about 10 years, right? Great. Um, and then the only time you would ever see, and you have may have noticed this in other applications, you'll see a sign or even a high highway light flashing. That's the power supply overheating and going bad. And that's just a quick change. Okay. So, the technologies come a long long way,

right? Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm I'm familiar with it as far as, you know, the adjustability of the lumens and all that uh are almost standard now. Um, so that's always nice. Um, just another quick comment. It looks in the picture. Is that a flood light that's up towards the peak of the the building? And do you know if that is Yeah, that if if that's something that's staying or

I think that's probably staying for their parking lot safety for their customers if they're open at night. Right. So again, I don't know if that's a issue that zoning would have picked up on or is addressing as a separate issue, but I just don't know again how that would affect the look of the signage if you know you have it lit and then there's a flood light kind of going on top of it. Um, so is it going to wash it out or uh or I mean I don't know how it looked before. I know there was a sign there before. I'm pretty sure the flood light is there for safety of customers leaving the parking lot or going into the parking lot at night.

Yeah. I mean, it be be almost nicer to see a light underneath that gable piece that sticks out just to kind of wash out into the the sidewalk area. I mean, it doesn't look like um again, I don't want to get into the the zoning rags, but the full cut off and things like that to, you know, again, just driving by if that flood light was on, it would take away from the signage potentially. Um, so that that's just again a comment that zoning uh is hopefully addressing or has addressed.

You are correct. We will be addressing that. Flood lights are not permitted. Um, as I understand, I'm not and and with with having that illuminated, we'll definitely address it with the property owner. Thanks. Yeah. So, that that's all I have. It should be Yeah, the lights should be full cut off lights. Um, and I know that the parking lot is not in front of the building. Uh, it's to the side of the building. Um there are some walkways but there are other means which it could be illuminated as well. So um it it will definitely be addressed. Great. Great. Thank you, Linda. Excellent Steve. Thank you. Yep. Excellent.

Dale.

Yeah, that u exactly was my point. I'm glad Steve brought it up. Um any um non-hooded lighting um in the town center should not be allowed and that light would absolutely compete with the sign lighting and in fact would raise your lumens and even to make it readable. So that light should be um disconnected and uh and and actually removed I think would be my recommendation. Um secondly, I think again if this is a design review think that gable looks like it's been beat up pretty badly. I I would like to see that gable refinished and repainted. Now I know we're in the offseason and I'm talking to the wrong people, but quite honestly if you're going to put a beautiful sign in front on that gable it really does look like it's pretty it's getting pretty tired and pretty old looking. I would recommended that that get refinished. All holes get cocked and sealed. Uh that light be removed and any holes get cocked. Wait till spring and repaint. But

I have to tell you I have to tell you right now that whole face that has been re resided. There are no holes in the face anymore. Excellent. Excellent. I couldn't tell that from the photograph. So I appreciate that. it it just makes your signage and the commerce moving in just a lot more professional looking if it if it if it were redone. So, um that that was my main comment and definitely I wanted to see shielded lighting in in the town and that that yard lighting needs needs to be removed. Um technically might be if they if they recite it they may have already removed that. I'm not really sure. Yeah, these are old pictures before we did. Yeah,

the best solution of all because they could take that power and use it if you needed it. Technically, just I don't know why you say front lit LED building sign. I would think a front lit light is a crane mounted light. You you mean internally lit, I think. But this but the actual drawing we're given it says front lit. Yeah, because there's uh something that's front lit and back lit. Back lit gives a halo glow out of the back. Front lit means the front of the letters are lit. But but it is internally lit. This is an internal It's internally. Yeah. So, um I forget what they call it. Uh indirect lighting is something where a spotlight would light a sign up.

Gotcha. Okay. Okay. And and then my last comment, the um to Neil's point, the um is it the purple accents in the circle? Is that being internally lit? So, there's a glow there or is that all just being surface mounted on the circle? Here, let me Can you guys see this real quick? Oh, so all the Yeah, you could show me. Let me just If you guys can zoom in on this. If all the faces are off, that's what all the little This is what all the little LEDs are like. That there's a lens that goes over each one of those faces that is decorated. So these this this here, that's a drawing of all the internal lights right there.

The LEDs. It's the LEDs. and then go over the raw. Yeah, I can't really tell the difference. So, I guess my question is, of course, the word elite is receiving those. Is is is the circle graphic with the hands and the C and and the inner uh swoop also receiving LED lighting. Yes. Yeah. It's like it's like a giant circle channel letter, right? Scan letter. Yeah. So, it's it's lit just like the purple. Yep. Excellent. Excellent. Those are my comments. Okay. Uh and gentlemen, you hit all of my comments. I I like going last. Thank you very much.

You took my thunder. Um so I I think um I think we have a comments that we want to pass along to, you know, planning and zoning. They and and we can review those um when minutes are written up. I guess that's probably the best way. Yes, you want to summarize that. Seemed pretty clear. Um, but it but it also seems like we have no uh no fatal flaws here or objections really. Um, so thank you for the presentation. Thank you. I I just have one question. Um, Kelly, I I thought you were going to uh show or uh the a freestanding sign as well.

A freestanding sign there. There was a there is a a sign on the property and I was hoping or or Kelly, I'm not sure if if you have it ready. Um there's they're proposing to um there there's an existing freestanding sign there. It's on a double post. I I believe it's wood. Um, and they were just going to be replacing the panel um, using the existing post, but I at the time I I don't, you know, wasn't part of it. So, it wasn't part of it. You

Well, I I I when I initially put the permit in for the sign, the building sign, they just wanted to get that going quickly and they were going to decide down the line on the pylon sign. We did do like about a week ago, we had sent them um just kind of a rough mockup of what they could do on the pylon sign and that's what I had shown you. Um I haven't appi I haven't added that or signed uh applied for another sign permit for that yet because she hasn't told me what she wants to do on that if she wants to do anything if it's going to happen down the line or whatever. So that's why I kind of left it out. Sure. when it does, it would have to go back to this uh the design review board.

Okay. I was trying to just avoid, you know, if you had it ready, I you know, kind of just to expedite it. Um but if there's no rush for it and you're not sure when they're going to go move forward, then um you know, my only recommendation or I would recommend or put as also a condition that um if you are installing a free sanding sign that it goes back to the design review board.

Okay. Well, it's yeah, the posts are there. They exist. We would just be putting a new the signed face into the middle there with the with their logo. And I think you had talked to me about what was allowed and what wasn't allowed on that sign. And so I don't know if you talked to the owner about that. Um, I tried to relay that to her, but I wasn't a 100% sure of what she could actually do besides like no slogans and no like listing of what she does there services. Um, so I don't know if you discussed that with her when you met. Um, I have not. Okay.

All right. So, so yeah, the only thing I would have to show you is what we had done the run. We had done the rough markup where it just says like open space for it's not part of the proposal. So, I would say just come back when it's ready. Yeah. Okay. All right. Very good. Yeah. When you apply for the, you know, another permit for that sign, that'll trigger, you know, coming to us again and we'll have a the pleasure of another presentation from you. I'll be better at this. Hopefully, the Zooms. So, so will we. So, we'll we're all learning. Yeah. Well, we thank you. Any any other comments from uh our membership?

The road sign just Oh, we we don't even have to. It's not going to be lit up. I just wanted you to know that. Okay. Well, we'll have another we we'll have another chance to to review that. All right. So, we thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Do we have any All right. business.

Mark, I would in in old business, should we just sort of bring the new members, you know, have a discussion about how we operate? They've gotten a taste of it, but and basically this is the format that we use, but should we use that as an old business? Um well uh we do have a written um sort of charge and um an operations you know sort of manual that I assume you have right I am not sure okay well if we can ask Linda you know to get that to to um

to our new members that would be a great idea and I will do that in the next week um yes there are guidelines um you know operational guidelines as well does um in the BCD district uh what the design criteras should be. It's important for the members to know you're looking at the design uh to be compatible with the surrounding area as well as in the village district there are um certain materials um that the regulations speak about. So we'll definitely send that over. Great. Great. because I know you and John had spent considerable time in the last year, you know, developing our procedures. Um, right.

The other thing is I don't know if Linda or John's office could let them know. We we have a little bit of history with what's coming along uh with developers or buildings that we've seen already that are sort of in the pipeline because we have basically a two-stage pro process and in that process we've seen a a couple of developments. one quite major that um we I believe is coming back and it might be good it might be good to have something with that historic data uh available for for these guys to look at.

Yeah, that would that would be good uh good for all of us really to have an understanding of when we might be seeing them again. I mean there's Paul Butler development. Yes. On Bloomfield Avenue, the Gab Road. And Gab Road. Yeah. Yep. I'm aware of it and I'd love to hear anything that has been discussed already. That would be great. Yeah, he's been to us twice. Three times maybe. I don't remember. Linda, do you remember? Yeah. Uh in the last year twice. Okay. Y uh we are meeting with him again next week. Staff um just to kind of uh go over I'm I'm not sure yet, but um we are meeting with him again next week. Okay. So maybe we'll see something in January. Um we're hopeful.

But but that's a great idea. Neil Neil, thank you. Thank you. Any other old business? If not, I will take a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Moved by Steve, seconded by Dale. Thank you very much. All in favor of adjourning, say I. I. I. Okay, we are. Yeah. Welcome to the club. Thank you.