Not-so-bright lights for a small city
H-board OKs Descartes sign after nighttime visit
Descartes Labs, like most businesses setting up new headquarters, wanted a sign on its building.
Trouble was, the building sits in downtown Santa Fe. In a historic district. Break out the code book. And gird for a fight at the Historic Districts Review Board — the H-board for short, a sobriquet that has stricken fear in the heart of many a bright-eyed developer with ambitious mold-breaking plans for downtown Santa Fe.
In an almost yearlong saga with an unmistakable it-could-only-happen-here flavor, Descartes Labs, a buzzy tech startup, on Tuesday won approval from the board allowing three illuminated signs on the remodeled Firestone Building on North Guadalupe at West Alameda streets.
That followed a late-night test during which H-board members watched as a technician dialed the illumination up
and down to let them judge the appropriateness of various brightness levels. Deliberations included the permissible nighttime wattage (50 percent for the “Descartes Labs” lettering and 33 percent for a multicolored hexagonal logo). There also were harried consultations regarding the city’s dark-sky ordinance and debate about what hour the sign’s lights should be turned off each night (10 p.m.).
The proposal did draw opposing testimony from a handful of residents who decried the potential for “commercialization” run amok in the heart of the nation’s oldest capital city, a place where illuminated signs have been strictly regulated since the city adopted architectural controls in the late 1950s and where neon would be unthinkable.
If you’ve ever wondered whether Santa Fe takes preservation to its utmost seriousness, well, here’s your sign.
For all that, negotiations between the company and the city’s historic styles reviewers were harmonious.
“Honestly, a lot of people warned me about the H-board,” Descartes Chief Executive Mark Johnson said. “I thought, ‘Oh, geez, here we go.’ But they were really good to work with. They let us have full color. They were really generous with the brightness.”
The process did take a while, though. Descartes Labs initially submitted a signage proposal in November. Approval was nearly delayed Tuesday night after an eleventh-hour debate about additional administrative minutiae.
Descartes Labs, which uses computer learning to turn satellite data into visual images, signed a 10-year lease and moved in this year, signaling that Santa Fe is open to 21st-century business. A few blocks from the Plaza, the 18,000-square-foot building dates to the early 1980s. The site, once the home of a tire store, later housed a bank, a sports bar and dinner theater.
The structure itself is not historic, but it sits within a historic area, where colors, illumination, size and height of signs are controlled by the city’s Historic Preservation Division and the fivemember board.
The restrictions on signage and other design details in Santa Fe’s historic districts were born out of an effort to make new development harmonize with a dominant Pueblo Revival character and minimize incongruous colors, massings and lights.
“We really thought there was going to be more of a battle,” said Luca Marino-Baker of Autotroph, an architecture firm that helped design Descartes’ new headquarters. “There was compromise on both ends.”
Compromise did take time, though. Johnson’s initial proposal of one large sign became three, and the size and height of the three were negotiated and agreed upon, and finally the illumination issue was hashed out Tuesday night as the H-board went back and forth at length over converting measurements in foot-candles to wattages and whether it had the authority to determine compliance with the city’s dark sky ordinance.
“We don’t want to be gaudy,” Johnson said. “One thing we really emphasized was we want to be tasteful.”
The board heard four complaints from residents who viewed the lighting allowance as a “can of worms,” as one opponent put it.
“Absolutely not,” said resident Bill Deutsch. “If [Johnson] had his way, there’d be big bright lights and big neon signs pointing toward his business. It’s contrary to Santa Fe.”
Board member Ed Boniface asked Deutsch if he had been to see the lighted signs at night.
“Nope,” Deutsch said, laughing. “You got me there.”
Honestly, a lot of people warned me about the H-Board. I thought, ‘Oh, geez, here we go.’ But they were really good to work with. They let us have full color. They were really generous with the brightness.” Descartes Chief Executive Mark Johnson