Palatine council approves grocery's new sign after it was built

All turned out well for a Palatine supermarket that built a new electronic message board before the matter went to the village council for official approval.

Palatine officials said Butera Fruit Market earlier this year erroneously received a village building permit for the free-standing sign, which is off Rand Road just north of Hicks Road. Butera is part of Fox Fire Plaza.

Butera, with what seemed to be a proper permit in hand, hired a company to build the sign with rotating messages about the store's deals and other information. However, village officials later discovered the sign should not have been allowed without going through a formal approval process for a special-use permit required under local law.

Ben Vyverberg, the village's director of building and zoning, said the sign company and Butera were contacted about the error and applied for the special permission. That led to a public hearing and favorable recommendation from the advisory plan commission, then final village council approval this month.

Councilman Kollin Kozlowski said while "the cat's out of the bag now," he had some concern about Butera's message board before voting for approval.

"I've driven by there," Kozlowski said. "I've seen flashing lights on it. It did scroll a couple times."

Vyverbeg said village code requires messages on the signs to hold for at least 15 seconds before switching. He said he visited the Butera property with a stopwatch to time the new electronic board and found the messages generally changed at or near the 15-second mark.

Palatine requires a business to seek the special-use permit for an electronic message board if it is to be built within 500 feet of another. Butera needed the permit because it is 220 feet from an electronic sign at Arlington Toyota, 2095 N. Rand Road.

Some operations in the Rand-Dundee Road corridor have electronic message boards including Tore and Luke's, the Palatine Park District and Culver's.