How big is too big for Underline signs along U.S. 1? Smaller ads get green light

The Underline park can raise money by putting donor names on Metrorail columns, but the commercial signs can’t be nearly as large or as bright as what was first proposed.

Miami-Dade commissioners on Wednesday approved changes to the county sign code allowing commercial advertising on the Metrorail columns that dot the Underline, the $140 million linear park being built underneath the train system.

READ MORE: Commissioner backs off law change for digital ads on Metrorail columns on U.S. 1

The new law allows for much smaller and less flashy commercial signs than were originally proposed. Following a Feb. 6 report in the Miami Herald showing the changes would permit advertising larger than what the county allows for billboards, the legislation’s sponsor delayed the planned vote on the measure so she could scale back the rules to reflect what she said the Underline wanted.

“That was a mistake,” Commissioner Raquel Regalado, the legislation’s sponsor, said during a Friday webinar about the 950-square-foot commercial ads and digital signage allowed under the original proposal. “We always said from the beginning we did not want advertising, and we did not want digital signs.”

The revised legislation that passed unanimously and without debate allows 150-foot commercial advertisements on a Metrorail column face, provided they’re not larger than 300 square feet over two sides of the rectangular supports. No digital signage is allowed. The revised law retains the rules that there must be 1,500 feet between each Underline commercial sign facing the same roadway and that none are allowed on stretches of the park next to residential neighborhoods.

Friends of the Underline is a nonprofit overseeing the 10-mile linear park that’s under construction between the Miami River and the Dadeland South Metrorail station. A portion of the park is already open in the Brickell neighborhood.

The group said it needed the law change to allow even modest acknowledgment of private donors on Metrorail columns, as well as art installations it also wants to put on the pillars. A mock-up of a Metrorail column prepared by the Underline group showed a donor’s name in a plain font without logos, similar to existing signage on columns with the Underline name and jumbo numbers indicating mile markers.

“It’s very simple,” Meg Daly, president and founder of the Underline group, said in the webinar. “It’s the name of the donor. And a ‘thank you.’”