Signs downsized for new grocery in downtown Carlsbad

Some of the signs outside a Barons Market coming to Carlsbad’s Village will not be as large requested, but the Carlsbad City Council loosened the standards a bit for what soon will be the downtown’s only grocery store.

The founder the local chain, Joe Shemirani, said the location in an existing building on Madison Street north of Grand Avenue needs multiple signs, some with 31-inch-tall letters, to generate the foot traffic required for a successful business.

“We are not close to Grand Avenue,” he said. “We have to get visibility, and that’s why we came up with this.”

However, the City Council said the signs on the outside wall of the building can have letters no taller than 18 inches, which is the maximum set by the Village and Barrio Master Plan. The City Council approved the master plan in 2018 as a guideline for additional development in the city’s two oldest neighborhoods.

“I’m not really concerned with people knowing where Barons is,” said Mayor Keith Blackburn. “It’s a small downtown village. Everybody is going to know it’s there in a week or two.”

The building’s main entry is onto a parking lot in what’s known as the Roosevelt Center, just south of the downtown post office.

Shemirani requested waivers from the city’s sign standards to allow two “Barons” signs on a corner of the building facing the parking lot and Madison Street and another at the front of the building, along with a 10-foot-tall logo showing the letter “B” inside a circle that wraps around the corner, and two monument signs each 6 feet and 7 inches tall at the parking lot entrances.

The City Council denied the request for the sign on the side facing Madison, saying it was excessive, and reduced the size of the signs facing the parking lot. It allowed the logo on the building and the two monument signs to be installed as requested, although both slightly exceed the Village standards.

Shemirani and his family opened the first Barons Market in 1993 in Point Loma. The Carlsbad store will be their 10th in San Diego and Riverside counties. The stores typically are about half the size of those in most large grocery chains.

“We are a neighborhood grocery,” Shemirani said to the council. ” Our product line is natural, organic natural foods.”

Pasta sauce that takes up a 12-foot line of shelves in a supermarket is just 4 feet wide at a Barons, he said. Before adding new products to the shelves, a panel of management employees looks at 100 to 120 items and selects four or five of them based on the look of the label, the taste and the cost.

“The typical grocery store has about 50,000 items,” he said. “We carry only 9,000 items.”

He’s been negotiating for 12 years to get a Carlsbad location and expects to spend up to $6 million to open in the renovated building, he said.