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Primrose School of Arden Hills and Shoreview <br />4061 Lexington Ave N <br />Arden Hills, MN 55126 <br />Attachment C 651.340.0787 <br />Reauestinp- flexibilitv to the sign standards in order to allow the <br />use of the existing freestanding sign for Primrose Schools, at the <br />intersection County Road F and Lexington Ave N. <br />We are submitting this statement in support of our application to allow flexibility to <br />Primrose in using the existing freestanding sign that's already on the property. <br />Background: <br />We are the Franchisee of Primrose Schools° based out of Atlanta, Georgia. We were <br />awarded the site at 4061 Lexington Ave N, through the Primrose Schools ° Real Estate <br />Team who was involved in the initial process with the city in getting this site approved <br />and developed as Primrose School, converting it from the Bremer Bank Building. <br />Why signage was not done on Primrose within the first year of completion: <br />We opened our doors of the school in October of 2019, while some of our signage was <br />still being worked on including the freestanding pylon signage, previously used by <br />Bremer Bank. Unfortunately, Pandemic hit us within the first 5 months of our <br />operations, and we lost majority of our existing and projected income. We had high <br />debts and mortgages to support and newly hired staff and management to pay. Thus, all <br />the infrastructure projects were put on hold. We did not know if we were going to be <br />able to survive in 2020 due to COVID impact and so signage project never took off as a <br />priority. In 2023, after a couple of years of stability, we restarted the signage project and <br />applied for the state funding to help us with the cost, since we lost our initial contract <br />funds from Primrose Schools. Unfortunately, Primrose Schools° real estate team never <br />shared with us the conditionality from the City, as part of the site plan approval, that the <br />freestanding sing was considered non -confirming and that we had one year from the <br />completion date to start using that sign in order to remain compliant. If we had known <br />about it we would have at least had asked the city to give us extra time during Covid or <br />would have worked on getting the freestanding pylon signage work completed within <br />one year. We became aware of this condition for very first time from the city on Friday <br />May 10, 2024 after our permits were approved. <br />The Leader in Early <br />Education and Care <br />