A move to help Coquitlam businesses advertise during the pandemic will soon be made permanent.
This month, city council gave three readings to the Sign Amendment Bylaw to continue — in perpetuity — the Temporary COVID-19 Signage Exemptions for Local Businesses policy.
Those exemptions, which city council brought forward in November 2020 and extended last fall for a year, are due to end on Saturday (Dec. 31).
The bylaw relaxations mean Coquitlam business owners and operators don’t need to apply for an emergency sign permit to tell shoppers their:
- hours of operation
- openings and closures
- changes to services
- contact information
And, under the policy, they can put up any size of a temporary sign they want on their property — except for a sandwich board sign.
The flexibility also allows owners to keep a time-limited sign up for longer and it eliminates the maximum number of temporary signs permitted.
The changed policy is intended to boost local business and economic growth without owners and operators having to go through the red tape, wrote Andrew Merrill, Coquitlam’s director of development services, in a Dec. 6 report to council.
The amendment, which is set for fourth and final reading in the new year, also aims to broaden the exemptions to apply for future declared pandemics and emergencies.
Asked about sandwich boards crowding city sidewalks, Don Luymes, Coquitlam’s general manager of planning and development, told council that those types of signs “have been a real issue” around Metro Vancouver.
Often, sandwich boards don’t leave enough room on the sidewalk for wheelchairs and can present tripping hazards for pedestrians with visual impairments, Mayor Richard Stewart added.
