Sign causes zoning rift

MONTROSE — Horacio and Alicia Lavanchy, co-owners of Divina Cucina restaurant in Montrose, got a green light from the City Planning Department to go ahead with a $500,000 renovation of their eatery, but the couple is now being told by the city that their recently completed project is illegal.

The Lavanchys got approval from the Design Review Board and the Planning Department last year to make interior cosmetic improvements and convert an existing canvas canopy above the restaurant's patio section into a permanent roof, they said. The Lavanchys began construction of the Spanish-tiled roof in January and finished the project on May 7.

But now planning officials say the new roof renders the restaurant's pole-sign, which extends from the ground up through the roof, out of compliance with city code. Roof signs were made illegal by the city in 1973, and the Divina Cucina sign — considered a ground sign before the new project was completed — is now a roof sign, said Wolfgang Krause, principal planner for the city's Planning Department.

"The rule's been in effect that way since August of '73," Krause said. "I guess if you're designing a project all you have to do is ask, but if you don't bring it up and you don't have all your plans showing it clearly, it's easy to miss."

Horacio Lavanchy contends that his project was extensively reviewed by city planners, and his plans — designed by Nakaishi Associates, an architectural firm that frequently handles projects in Glendale — show the pole-sign in clear view.

Elevation drawings show an outline of the existing sign and a note that reads "no change." But the project's roof plan, a separate page in the plan set, does not show the sign — an inconsistency that was missed in the final plan check by the Planning Department, said Laura Stotler, principal planner in the department.

Lavanchy says his plans were clear and that the Planning Department should have caught the problem before he started construction.

"If [the sign] would have been the focus from day one I would have addressed the problem then," Lavanchy said. "Now that the roof is up, that everything is finished, they came to me a week before everything was done and I received a letter saying that it was illegal."

But the letter was not the first time Lavanchy was alerted to the potential conflict relating to his sign, Stotler said.