Chipotle's sign 'a bit odd, but that's OK'
The McGalliard Road commercial strip impacts people's impression of Muncie
MUNCIE — After its request for a 27-foot-tall pole sign was denied, Chipotle Mexican Grill installed what is likely the smallest chain-store sign on the McGalliard Road commercial strip.
The sign is eight feet tall and less than two feet wide. It’s so insignificant that you might not have noticed it among the forest of other signage whose canopy reaches heights of at least 45 feet along the corridor.
(Be careful trying to find the sign when driving by the restaurant, which opened last month, to avoid swerving out of your lane).
Last year, Chipotle received some negative press (from this reporter) when it unsuccessfully tried to sidestep the city ordinance banning pole signs. So does the restaurant deserve some good publicity for its new tiny sign?
“Yes, I do think this is progress,” landscape architect Matt Ingalls, of Fairport, N.Y., said via email of Chipotle’s sign. “One of the most significant obstacles communities face when trying to improve design along suburban corridors is the pushback from people that use the existing design character as justification for more of the same design/character.
“It will look a bit odd for a period but that's OK. It has to start somewhere, so why not with this sign — one redevelopment project at a time, one sign at a time? As redevelopment takes place and with the right rules in place parking will move to the side or rear of buildings; front yards will include landscaping and low-impact signs; outdoor seating will emerge; sidewalks and street trees installed, etc. If Muncie can become more transformational rather than transactional, great things will happen. It starts with small decisions like this.
"I think it's great that you are recognizing this. Give credit where credit is due.”
Chipotle isn’t the first chain store to try and fail to seek a zoning variance to construct a pole sign on McGalliard since the pole ban took effect in 2014. Others have included Burger King, Wendy’s, Belle Tire and Fazoli’s.
Cheryl Heidorn, a senior design manager for Chipotle in Columbus, Ohio, recently told me, “I would have definitely rather had a pole sign” in Muncie to put Chipotle “on more equal footing with all of its neighbors up and down McGalliard.”
That’s the typical argument that Ingalls cited: The “pushback from people that use the existing design character as justification for more of the same design/character.”
Last August, Heidorn noted to the Metropolitan Board of Zoning Appeals that the McGalliard corridor’s actual appearance constituted a “stark contrast” to the attractive corridor envisioned in the city’s 2014 zoning amendments.
“There are 74 pole signs in less than three miles between North Broadway and West Bethel Avenue,” Heidorn said at the time.
In a recent phone interview, Heidorn said Chipotle never would have wasted its time and money seeking the variance “had I known Muncie had such a strong stance” against pole signs.
Chipotle had asked for permission to reuse a 27-foot-tall pole sign at the former Brinkman’s Shoes store, 720 W. McGalliard Road. Chipotle rebuilt the former shoe store into a restaurant.
After the variance was denied, Heidorn reviewed “our signage kit — we do have a few different options,” and chose one known internally as “the cigar sign,” because it’s brown and cigar shaped. “I think it’s a really nice-looking, modern sign that fits the spot,” she said. “It’s small but hopefully it does the trick.”
Recently, Chipotle used the same cigar signs for its new restaurants in West Melbourne, Fla., which is no Boca Raton (“the Beverly Hills of South Florida”) and in Grandview Heights, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.
The Muncie Chipotle sign tops out at the maximum height allowed by the ordinance but is much narrower than the allowable monument-style signs that have been built by other chains on McGalliard in recent years. Monument signs are low-profile ground signs that normally lack open space between the ground and the sign —like a typical headstone placed over a grave.
Corridor-development standards were enacted by the city in 2014 in an attempt to eventually make McGalliard and other commercial corridors look more like downtown, which the majority of Munsonians find more attractive than McGalliard’s “Anywhere, USA” appearance.
Ingalls holds degrees in urban economics, city and regional planning, and landscape architecture from the University at Buffalo and from Ohio State University.
He studied Muncie’s corridors when he co-authored “TogetherDM,” the new Delaware-Muncie Comprehensive Plan.
In an interview last year, Ingalls told me that the appearance of Muncie’s major corridors and gateways conveys low standards and lack of pride.
“There are times we see that in other cities, but it just seems more prevalent in Muncie, in terms of the expectation and desire to have higher quality,” he said. “Even newer development, in some corridors, is not at the point it should be or that the city should expect from newer development. Regulations need to be … upgraded a bit and hold people to a higher standard.”
He added: “The way properties look and are maintained and developed has a big impact on people’s impression of what the city is like, whether they want to open a business there, buy a home there, or send your kids to college there. All those things, aesthetics, quality of corridors including gateways and first impression of a place, I don’t know if Muncie is unusual, but it just seemed like every corridor we looked at had the same thing, whereas a lot of cities have a few corridors at higher standards and then maybe other corridors need some help. It seemed like Muncie has a bunch of corridors that need to be taken to the next level.
“Fundamental urban design principles … don’t necessarily cost more money; it’s just a different way of doing things, but they need to be in the code. If you don’t tell business to do it differently, they typically will not do it on their own.”
Previously, in Greater Muncie: