After months of meticulous analysis, members of the Johnson City Historic Zoning Commission finally seem to have produced design guidelines for the downtown area, settling on banning all murals from the area to avoid lawsuits.
The review of the current guidelines was sparked by a disagreement with the owners of two businesses who were cited by city codes enforcement officers, who claimed the paintings on the outside walls of their businesses were signs, and didn’t go through the proper process of approval through the historic commission.
The business owners claimed the paintings were art, or murals, which led to threats of litigation from both sides and the careful look at the existing design guidelines, last updated in 2008.
Speaking to the historic zoning commissioners Thursday, city attorney Erick Herrin said attempts by the board to regulate the content of murals could be considered stifling free speech, and could open the municipality up to lawsuits.
“You don’t want to set up a process in which you can be accused of passing on the content of a mural,” he said. “Whatever you put in that type of guideline, if they’re running murals past you, that is speech … and we cannot put ourselves in the position as a government of trying to control speech.”
Commissioners poured over the guidelines for more than a year, meticulously debating each subsection, especially those dealing with signs and murals.
Before Thursday’s meeting, the board hoped to regulate the surface areas of murals and to only allow paintings that were “figurative in nature,” meaning they did not contain words or letters. The downtown district stretches across a few blocks in the city’s core along Main and Market streets, then over to parts of Cherry Street.
Attorney Amber Floyd Lee, representing Dick Nelson of Nelson Fine Art and Yancey and Valda Grimmett of Downtown Farming, the business owners at the center of the mural-versus-sign debate, contends that excessive attempts to control the content of artwork are violations of constitutional rights.
Last week, she and her clients sent a letter to the city offering the walls currently in dispute with an easement that would allow the Public Art Committee to choose muralists to paint over the walls.
Herrin noted that Lee’s letter offered to allow the city to choose the artists, but not the content, and said allowing murals downtown at all put the city in “slippery territory.”
Historic Zoning Commissioner Tom Mozen argued that murals may have value.
“It seems like there ought to be some limited way in which the city would be able to approve murals,” he said. “We should put restrictions on them that make sense.” He outlined a number of criteria for control, including size, location, duration, preferred themes, proper types of paint and a limit on the number of how many murals could be installed at any given time.
Ultimately, the members seemed to reach a consensus that murals should not be allowed downtown until a system can be set up through an independent board to have oversight.
“Our job as the Historic Zoning Commission is to protect and preserve the historic character of the buildings and the district,” Commissioner Sam Fullen said. “I can’t see where adding a mural … I can’t see that that in any way preserves or protects the historic architecture.”
The board also agreed that it’s time the guidelines were approved.
“These guidelines have been hanging for two years,” Commissioner Hal Hunter said. “They impact everybody in the district — (City Development Coordinator Steve Neilson) is holding up a sign ordinance, because we can’t make up our minds on murals.”
With a written draft in hand, the commissioners will likely vote on the guidelines in their next regular meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 23 in the City Commission chambers of the Municipal Safety Building.
Resource: http://www.johnsoncitypress.com
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