Murrysville council considers electronic billboard at former 'banner corner'
The “banner corner” in Murrysville may be getting at least one of its signs back.
Chief Administrator Jim Morrison said an anonymous donor has offered to fund the purchase of an electronic billboard at the intersection of Old William Penn Highway and Tarr Hollow Road.
A small green space at the intersection was previously where local groups could rent space to post a banner or a sign for an upcoming community event.
When recreation officials made some tweaks to the municipality’s fees ordinance in May 2018, they decided to remove the fee charged to community groups for hanging banners at the intersection — essentially ending the practice.
Council President Josh Lorenz said at the time he’d received “some push-back” from community groups about the proposal to do away with the banners.
Council entertained the notion of replacing the banners with an electronic billboard, similar to the municipal billboard on Route 22, but consensus at the time was that it would be too expensive.
“We’ve since kept the project alive, at least in the sense of looking for alternatives,” Morrison told council when discussing the anonymous donor. “A sign would likely be placed in the green space right-of-way area in front of the culvert on Old William Penn Highway,” he said.
Councilman Tony Spadaro said he didn’t think Murrysville needed another flashing sign.
“People are going to come up to that four-way stop and sit there waiting for their (message) to come up,” Spadaro said. “I think it’s going to become a problem.”
The “banner corner” went away, in part, because of difficulty managing what banners went up at what times, groups trying to “sneak” banners onto the corner and other administrative difficulties.
Councilman Loren Kase said it was worth discussing.
“It’s not a small investment,” he said. “But I think we should look at how we can make this reasonable with today’s technology.”
Morrison said staff would look into details such as pricing and sign models, and report back to council.
Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.