Compass asks for four lit signs and four variances at 1212 Lincoln
The real estate firm's second-floor offices at Lincoln and Alton roads would get blade and wall signs that city sign rules don't allow without the Design Review Board's OK on Nov. 19.
The owner of the retail and office half of the 1212 Lincoln complex at Lincoln and Alton roads wants to hang four illuminated signs for the Compass real estate offices there, and needs four variances from the city’s sign rules to do it. The Miami Beach Design Review Board is scheduled to hear the request (file DRB26-1188) on Thursday, Nov. 19.
ARRP Miami V LLC owns the non-hotel part of the project’s second phase at 1628–1634 Alton Road, the building that also holds the citizenM hotel and Fogo de Chão, according to a Sept. 3 letter from its lawyers at Bercow Radell Fernandez Larkin & Tapanes. Compass occupies mostly the second floor, with about 40 feet of ground-floor frontage and entrances on Lincoln Road and on Alton Road.
The plan calls for two wall signs with internally lit channel letters and two projecting “blade” signs, on the building’s north side facing Lincoln Road and its east side facing Alton Road. One blade sign would sit at the top of the project’s grand stair, the outdoor staircase that leads from Alton Road up to the second level.
According to the sign plans, each wall sign is 18 square feet and each blade sign 4 square feet, well under the size limits shown for those spots. The variances are about placement and style instead. City code requires a business to have direct street access for a sign facing a public street, which the second-floor entrance on Alton lacks. Projecting signs also must not sit in front of windows, must use open-face or reverse channel letters, and must match the other signs on the building; the Compass blade signs would not meet those rules, the letter says.
The lawyers argue that the offices’ entrances are hundreds of feet from the intersection and that the signs are needed for wayfinding. The Design Review Board approved the overall 1212 Lincoln project in 2016.
The board meets at 9 a.m. Nov. 19 at City Hall, 1700 Convention Center Drive. A city staff recommendation was not yet posted with the agenda on Sunday.
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