A proposed sign for Sunnybrook now seems possible in coming months.
SANATOGA PA – Sunnybrook Foundation, the non-profit owner of Sanatoga’s Sunnybrook Ballroom conference facility, is being urged by the Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township Board of Commissioners to submit an application to the township Zoning Hearing Board that seeks approval of the foundation’s plans to erect a new promotional sign on East High Street.
The reason: money to pay for the sign is apparently waiting to be claimed.
There’s a catch, though. Foundation directors will be required to approve an indemnity agreement with the township before Lower Pottsgrove passes through the grant money that Montgomery County allocated for the purpose. Commissioners last Thursday (Jan. 21, 2010) authorized their solicitor, R. Kurtz Holloway, to draft that contract.
The board’s action is the latest in a long and sometimes publicly tortuous saga of Sunnybrook’s quest to better advertise entertainment and activities to which it plays host almost weekly. An existing billboard on the north side of the High Street bridge crossing Sprogels Run from Sanatoga west into Pottstown is considered antiquated and inadequate.
It’s been about 18 months since the foundation applied to the county for what now amounts to an $80,000 grant to replace the aging billboard, just northeast of Pottstown Memorial Medical Center, that must be changed by hand every time Sunnybrook announces an upcoming event. The foundation in December (2009) showed commissioners drawings of a computer-programmable, internally-lighted sign to replace it.
Sunnybrook, located at 50 Sunnybrook Rd., Pottstown PA, must obtain variance approval from the Zoning Hearing Board to put up the sign. The board meets as needed, but generally only once a month, and it may take time to get on its agenda. “The sign looks like it’s going to happen, so Sunnybrook has to get its application in,” Commissioner James Phillips said Thursday.
Commissioners have consistently said they favored the sign, and supported Sunnybrook’s efforts to win the money to buy it. They worried, however, over what they said were strings attached to the grant that held Lower Pottsgrove liable for its cost, upkeep and maintenance over a period of years should Sunnybrook fail. For that reason the board voted in July (2009) to return the free money to the county.
A lot has happened behind the scenes since then. “We took a lot of bad press and unfair criticism” over the grant rejection, Phillips said, even though commissioners individually and as a group kept meeting with county officials to work out some sort of compromise. Just what form that takes hasn’t been fully disclosed, but is expected to be the substance of the indemnity agreement on which Holloway is already working.
“The money is back on the table if Sunnybrook takes on the responsibility for it,” Holloway said. “Beyond that, it’s a contract that’s not yet approved by the board and I can’t say much more about it.”
Related:
- Sunnybrook Displays Vision Of A New Sign
- Still Hope For Sunnybrook Grant Township Rejected
- Its Grant Gone, Sunnybrook Looks To ‘Something Else’
- Township Says No To Sunnybrook Grant, Citing Risks
- Sunnybrook Grant On Township’s Agenda
- Sunnybrook, Township at Odds Over Grant
Related (to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners’ Jan. 21 meeting):
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This sounds like it might end in an amicable solution. The old billboard is decrepit at best and a rapidly reprogrammable modern sign would be a good thing. The township might even make use of it occasionally for local announcements.
All right, Sunnybrook Foundation, your ball…