U-Haul asks to put logo on water tower in Crystal Lake

The storage and moving company U-Haul has asked to repaint a water tower in Crystal Lake to include both city signage and the company’s logo.

The Crystal Lake Planning and Zoning Commission gave a thumbs up to plans to repaint the sign move forward at its meeting Wednesday.

“Our primary goal is obviously to clean it up,” U-Haul marketing company president Jeff Jones said. “It’s starting to look a little rusty at the bottom. We clearly haven’t done anything with it since we owned the property, and we are spending a lot of money to clean it up, so we’d like to put our advertising on it.”

The tower, located near the intersection of routes 14 and 31, is on U-Haul’s property. It was acquired in 2016, and is currently being used as part of U-Haul’s fire suppression system, Jones said.

The two U-Haul logo signs would each be 130 square feet, Jones said.

Several members of the commission said they felt the current signage – which dates back to before U-Haul purchased the site, when it was owned by Follett Books – was ugly and outdated and welcomed the idea of the city of Crystal Lake being showcased on the tower.

The advisory commission voted 5-2 in favor of the sign and recommended to the Crystal Lake City Council that a condition be set that if U-Haul leaves the property, the company would have 60 days to repaint the sign or remove the logos.

Those who voted against recommending the sign change said it would create a precedent of businesses requesting signs in unusual or inappropriate locations.

“I understand this is a unique piece of property,” commission chairman Jeff Greenman said, “but the risk I see is that a lot of petitioners could then come before us wanting additional signage.”

Commission member Bill Gronow also expressed concern with why the signage was necessary, noting that U-Haul already had signs on the site. He said he thought it was more about marketing than any added benefit to the city.

The Crystal Lake City Council will review the water tower proposal at its next meeting on June 7.