 |
Ken Smith/Turnagain Times Rochelle Morris, owner of Alaska Dacha in Hope, stands in front of her business sign that she had to move out of the right of way off the Hope Highway. |
By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
Lisa Simono woke up one morning to find her small three-foot sandwich sign missing. The sign advertising her B&B was on the side of the Hope Highway during the annual Wagon Trail 5-K run held July 20. Simono just assumed somebody stole it.
“In the morning it was there, and in the afternoon it was gone,” she said. “Three days later we got a call from DOT telling me I could pick up my sign in Anchorage.”
The sign cost Simono $500, and it was the only one she had marking the location of her new business, Alaskan Byways B&B.
“I thought we had to get the word out about the B&B, and a roadside sign would let people see it and turn into the driveway,” she said.
However, Simono made the mistake of putting the sign out along the highway in the right of way. A State Department of Transportation employee saw the sign and took it.
“They could have called me and told me to move the sign,” Simono said. “We have a lot of natural trees and fauna around our lots, and we like it. So we’re trying to enhance the area, and you’re penalized for it. People drove into my house next door that day asking if I knew where a B&B was.”
State law requires signs to be located 66 feet to 100 feet from the centerline of the highway. There is about a quarter mile stretch of highway from mile 16 of the Hope Highway where several businesses are located including Alaska Dacha and Bowman’s Bear Creek Lodge. All three businesses have had to comply with right of way laws by moving their business signs and fixed structures further away from the highway.
Rochelle Morris bought a Laundromat, general store and RV campground in 2005, now known as Alaska Dacha. She too ran afoul with the right of way laws and spent $200 to move her business sign back 50 feet in 2005 and also cut off a corner of a deck on a small cabin at the entrance to her property to remain in compliance with the right of way.
“At first they (DOT) were telling me that I had to move it back to the storefront,” she said. “But I had an ‘as built’ and they first told me I had to move it 100 feet from the centerline, but then they told me last week 66 feet.”
Morris said DOT finally agreed that the sign was compliant at its current location, a situation DOT reps says varies from business to business. All businesses are able to file for an appeal on an individual basis.
House Bill 279 was enacted in 2005 in part to allow business owners and individuals to participate in an appeals process in order to comply with right of way laws. However, the bill does not differentiate between rural and urban areas.
“It was an attempt to make it more liberal to permit encroachment of all types of signs in right of ways,” said Rick Feller DOT spokesman.
But the laws governing signs and billboards in right of ways can also be inflexible when initially dealing with noncompliance.
“The truth is, we don’t have any choice about moving a sign,” said Alan Hartig, DOT Property Management Supervisor in Right of Way.
In the case of the Alaska Byway B&B sign, Hartig said they tried to contact the business owner, but were unable to, so the next step was to remove the sign. He said they usually don’t charge for the removal of signs and always seek to return it to the owner. He said it’s an issue of safety to motor vehicles that signs cannot be on the highway and in the right of way.
Bowman’s Bear Creek Lodge is also in violation of a law governing the placement of signs in a ‘clear zone.’ The lodge owner, Kent Bowman, has been ordered to move his business sign out of its current location, which DOT engineers determined is located on a steep downward slope and is a hazard to drivers.
The problem, Hartig said, was that if a vehicle went off the road it could continue down the steep slope and hit the sign, considered an immovable structure.
“It’s in the right of way,” said Hartig, “but because it’s a fixed hazard in the right of way and clear zone, the clear zone gets extended in a steep zone.”
“So are about 5,100 trees,” responded Bowman, referring to natural hazards along the highway. Nonetheless, Bowman is going to try to comply by making the sign a breakaway structure.
In June, Bowman also moved a log sauna that was in the right of way. He said they moved it log by log to a new location. Now he must move one more structure, a log cabin that he rents.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to do with the cabin,” he said. “There’s nowhere to put it on the property. I got an estimate of the cost to move the cabin, and it would be in excess of $10,000.”
Bowman is now appealing for hardship, the only recourse he has to save the building.
“The cabin’s just within the 60-foot right of way,” he said. “There’s just a three foot difference. The law says it’s a desirable distance.”