To normal humans, a sign is a one-dimensional advertising tool.
Not to Jay Pearson.
When the co-owner of View Point moved the window and door business into a former stone supply building in 2007, he saw a 24-foot-tall, freestanding opportunity.
“As soon as I had that sign,” he remembers, “I said, ‘This is gonna be fun!’ ”
Over the years, Pearson’s reader-board messages along State Street have made Boise drivers chuckle: “There’s no way everybody was kung fu fighting.”
The sign has caused them to self-reflect: “It’s not the mountain ahead, it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
It possibly has even made them swerve to avoid traffic. That’s the risk when you’re deciphering a purposely backward-spelled oddity in the rear-view mirror: “flesmih llik t’ndid nietspE” — “Epstein didn’t kill himself”— wait, what?
But the latest message might cause panic. Or just sadness.
“Save our sign!” View Point warns passersby. “Garden City wants it removed.”
Posted underneath is the phone number for City Hall in Garden City.
“Garden City,” it begs on the other side, ”please don’t take our sign.”
To Idahoans who pine for a simpler time, the dilemma at 6715 W. State St. is another prime example of the unwanted transformation of the growing Treasure Valley.
For Pearson, it’s a jolt. On a business and a personal level. “I’ve had a lot of fun with that sign for the last 15, 20 years,” he says.
“People leave messages on the weekend, ‘Hey, your sign changed my life.’ It sucks. It’s probably going to go away.”
How ACHD, city code limit options
View Point’s sign is a victim of incomplete Garden City code and the Ada County Highway District’s State Street and Pierce Park Lane widening project, which is slated to begin in 2025.
View Point won’t be without any sign. But unless something drastic happens, its sign will get smaller. Farther from State Street. And possibly electronic.
Oh, and it’s going to cost taxpayers money.
“Ada County Highway is taking some of our property because they’re widening State Street,” Pearson explains. “So they say: ‘Jay, move your sign. We’ll pay for it.’ I’m like, ‘All right, I could do that.’ So I call a couple sign companies. They say, ‘Yeah, no problem, here’s your quote, like 15 grand, ballpark.’ ”
Except moving the sign? Turns out that’s not an option. And Garden City code no longer allows new signs to be that tall.
Appalled, Pearson did some detective work. He dug up the sign’s original permit from 1971 at Ada County Development Services. It was issued to a trailer supply company. That was before Zamzows took over the building. And International Stone. And, eventually, View Point, which refurbished the sign.
“It’s historic!” Pearson says. “It’s 50 years old, right? It’s not illegal.”
View Point’s sign is grandfathered. But Garden City code “does not have provisions to allow for the continuance of a nonconforming structure because it has been removed by government agency,” according to an email Pearson received from the development services department.
A new sign would need to be no more than 12 feet tall. And with a smaller message center. “The size of a big TV,” Pearson says gloomily. And with a reader board closer to 5 feet off the ground than 12 feet.
Pleading with an imaginary Garden City official, Pearson reenacts the disagreement.
“Here’s the permit. Let us move this sign back 8 feet towards the building.”
“Nope. You can’t move that sign.”
“I’m, like, ‘Someone else is making me move the sign. I don’t want to move it. Another entity is making me move it!’ ”
“Well, that’s not in the code. We can’t help you.”
“That’s great,” Pearson mutters.
‘A big mess’ on State Street
Much like View Point’s sign, the situation remains up in the air. Temporarily.
At the moment, Pearson says, the question is what exactly ACHD will pay for. Building an entirely new, modern, electronic sign would cost roughly $42,000, he says, rather than $15,000 to move the existing sign. There’s been some back and forth about ACHD only paying to replace the old one — with old-school letters that have to be placed manually on the reader board — instead of buying a digital sign. That would be $34,000 or $35,000, he says.
“The problem with a reader board,” Pearson says, “is anybody can come by and move the letters around because it’s only going to be 5 feet off the ground. And electronically, I can use my phone to change the message, instead of my guys having to go up a ladder to change the message.”
Pearson suspects View Point might have to pony up several thousand dollars out of pocket to make the sign electronic. But he’s only guessing. Obviously, he’d prefer that ACHD pick up the entire tab.
“It’s just a big mess,” he says. “It’s going to cost taxpayers an extra $25,000, at least, to have them build us a new sign instead of just having us move the old one. I try to tell them it’s historical, and people come by, and we’ve had so many great stories about that sign.”
Laughter, tears
One Monday morning years ago, Pearson checked View Point’s weekend messages to hear a tearful voice thanking him for a sign that read, “When you look at things differently, they change.”
He recalls that a woman had been traveling to or from a hospital after her husband had been in a bad accident.
“It just totally changed how she was thinking about it,” he says.
Other times, he admits, Idahoans haven’t been so keen on his humor. He’s been scolded more than once.
“I have gotten a little political a few times,” Pearson adds, “but that is a tricky line to walk.”
“We found Trump’s tax returns,” the sign once claimed, “and Hillary’s emails.”
A quip that “did not go well,” he says, wasn’t about politics at all. It was just in questionable taste. He thinks he borrowed the idea after driving past the Torch Lounge, a longtime Boise bikini bar. “Girls! Girls! Girls!” View Point’s sign declared. “Just kidding. We sell windows.”
It got yanked after a complaint from an unamused woman. She shared her feelings in a voicemail, not an actual call. “Thank goodness,” Pearson says. “… I’m not here to piss people off.”
Pearson chooses all the sayings. “It’s hard. I’ll watch television, and I’ll hear somebody have a good comment on something. I’ll be, like: ‘That’s good! I’ve got to save that one.’ Or I’ll have people call me saying, ‘You should put this one up there.’ ”
When it comes to View Point’s sign, Idahoans “do care,” he says. Which makes the thought of moving it, shrinking it — changing the sign at all — tough to swallow.
“People say, ‘I read that sign every day. I love your messages,’ ” Pearson says. “That’s the thing that sucks.”
As the City of Trees changes, nostalgic Boiseans should remember one of View Point’s uplifting messages.
“Some of the best days of your life,” the sign promised, “haven’t happened yet.”
Source Agencies
