CLARIFICATION: The Lennox House may be able to erect a sign. But it will have to jump through numerous bureaucratic hoops and convince neighbors, some of whom are determined to oppose it. The rules do allow the owners to request an amendment to the 1997 development plan to drop the ban on a free-standing sign. And the Historic Preservation Board will consider allowing the sign, if the owners and innkeepers decide to petition for it.
You can have a business in Colorado Springs’ Old North End. But don’t think about advertising it. Unless you are a day care center or home furnishing business or apartment building.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the city rules that allow some businesses lighted signs while denying others simple, wooden signs.
That’s the case with Lennox House Bed & Breakfast at 1339 N. Nevada Avenue.
The Lennox House was allowed to open in 1997 but not to put a sign in the yard. The only thing identifying it as different from surrounding Victorians in the Old North End is a small plaque on the wall. See it there? Next to the window? DIdn’t think so. Me neither. I drove right past the place.
Here’s a better look at it.
Here’s the sign Innkeeper Mike Beck erected in his front yard.
Here’s a map from FlashEarth.com of the Lennox House:
Beck learned that adding a sign in the yard wasn’t as simple as digging a hole. There are bureaucracies to deal with it. Doesn’t matter nearby businesses have signs. With lights. They are grandfathered in.
Even though a neighbor or two complained and Beck’s first attempt to put up his sign was denied, he still has a chance to get it approved. It will require applications and permits and public meetings and time off work for hearings.
Guess it is a sign of the times.
==================================
Run and hide all property right’s advocates! The do-gooders are organizing as we speak to keep you from damaging yourself and others. Just wait and see what the west side group has up their sleeve with the up and coming “historical overlay” project. Advertise,build, fix and repair to your heart’s content but you must do it THEIR way.
We are just trying to boost business. Not just for us, but for all of Colorado Springs. Yes we are a bed and Breakfast, but we are so much more, we are historians, and love to share the history of Colorado College, Colorado Springs, and Cripple Creek. We are related to many of the prominent business leaders in this community, and want to make sure the history not only gets preserved, but also gets presented. What’s the point of preserving the history, if you can’t share it with others?
Well, our Old Colorado City Historical Society benefited from the Lennox B&B on Sunday, Dec 7th as we ran our fund raising annual Bed and Breakfast Tours. This year the Lennox house let us add their B&B, even though it is up in the North End to our tours. It was one of the 7 on the tour – several others were in Manitou.
We did well this year, being a totally volunteer, non profit History Society and Center – (while the overrated Pioneer’s Museum is local tax supported to the tune of $1.3 million a year with 14 employees, we have to make all our own money to keep OUR doors open!. In fact, through we had to shell out paid advertising this year, we made $1,400, just lower than last two years. I know. I am the treasurer.
So Bev Disch, who organizes our tours each year, at our Monday board meeting praised the Lennox folks for their generous use of their beautiful B&B. So thanks!
And who knows, since we of the westside really know how to get Historic Preservation done without ham handed neighbors being able, through city government to tell any homeowner what he/she can do with their home, we just make the Lennox B&B an Honorary Westsider!!!!
By the way, I am quite familiar with the ‘Old North End’. For it has many beautiful mansions. I know. As a native I grew up on Millionaires Row – 1225 Wood Avenue. And that was my home of record all my military career, until I retired in 1973. And I even bought a home then on the ‘eastside’ (not a mansion though), but I became angry when I saw that the dumb downtown businessmen and the absent minded city council use Urban Renewal AND Eminent Domain (and they say they are ‘conservative?) to destory the downtown – great old Antlers Hotel AND the world class Burns Theater that I grew up around and which tourists liked to visit.
The City THEN was going to tear down all the small Victorian buidings along Colorado Avenue on the Westside and put some industrial plant there. I said NO WAY, and not only rolled up my sleeves to renovate the entire Westside using Historic Preservation as a major tool to help the VERY run down westside (50% of ALL 100 commercial buildings on Colorado Avenue were vacant in 1975) including what you know now as ‘Old Colorado City’ but also dumped my modern eastside home and moved into an 1900 Georgian Cottage on the westside!
So I am not so sure, as Bill Vogrin says above, that the issue the Lennox B&B has is so much a ‘sign of the times’ as it is the hypocricy in Colorado Springs which brags about how politically ‘conservative’ it is, then turns around, as it has on the Old North End and imposes ITS will and that of other busybodies on individual property owners, like the Beck’s.
Friends. I am a historian by nature, so is my family, and especially my innkeepers, Mike and Debbie Beck who lovingly run the Lennox House Bed & Breakfast for me. Let me concede right up front that we can live without a sign if it is going to greatly offend some of the homeowners in the area. But, it seems odd to me that other business’s would get a pass because of some “grandfather” law, apparently etched in stone I guess, that allows signage regardless of the historical ambiance of Nevada Ave. This old law makes existing signs in the North End acceptable for everyone historically? The historical ambiance everyone is so passionate about is expunged because of a grandfather law? What kind of rule is this? Why haven’t the folks that are so passionate about not allowing my sign, attacking this unfair law on the same historical basis? With such a law, all the complaining about our sign looses it’s credibility frankly.
Believe me, no one has done more to return the Lennox House to its original pristine ambiance than we have. We have spent thousands of dollars getting the home back to the 1890′s era with vintage furniture, lighting fixtures, and vintage decor all throughout the home during an economic period that devastated Colorado Springs. A period in which no one was interested in doing any business in the Springs. When the Lennox House first opened, it had a reputation for being dirty and filled with garage sale furniture that detracted from the historical beauty of the home. We want to share the home with everyone in the community, yet people coming to our open houses within the neighborhood, remark on what a beautiful home it is as a B&B, and then remark that they never new what it was. Many have remarked that they would have liked to have had their family stay at the Lennox House if only they had known. Not everyone has a computer to search on.
If we had known that we could not have the sign we erected , then I guess in reading some of the commentary we should have forgone buying the home and spending thousands to bring it back to its former 1890′s glory in the community. When you really think about it, would the grandfathered rule prohibiting our sign be worth giving up what what we have accomplished historically since taking ownership? If any one would be willing to trade off what we have accomplished with this home in the last three years for a prohibition on a sign, then I say to those people, be happy with what you are and what you would have prevented, the complete restoration of one of the most famous homes in Colorado Springs.
The Lennox House has been named the number one B&B in Colorado Springs several times and we will continue to be in the top for the foreseeable future, with or without a sign. Having a sign you can see though might help us a great deal in these tough economic times. surely the naysayers understand the economic benefits a sign could have?
Rules are made everyday to inhibit freedom by special interest groups. We allow them to stand because of a certain degree of helplessness and an attitude that it doesn’t directly effect my pocket book, so who cares if their business suffers without a visible sign.
I am reminded of an old saying we have all heard many times before that now seems even more prudent to those who pretend that they really care about the North End historically and yet quote the grandfather clause in the law to allow signs for some and not for others because it would be to much trouble to fight it.
“Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!”
Larry Linder
Owner,
Lennox House B&B