Variance Granted Illegal Billboard Magnuson Hospitality Agrees To Pay $300 Fine

The “Silver Country” sign that looms over Wallace will stay put.

The city’s planning, zoning and historic preservation commission this week granted a variance for the billboard, which was changed illegally last August.

The sign is owned by Magnuson Hospitality. Executive Tom Magnuson agreed to pay a $300 fine for not getting approval to alter the sign, which until August read only: “Historic Wallace.”

He also agreed to request necessary variances in the future.

The resolution of the dispute was fair, he said Thursday.

“We fully support the planning and zoning commission’s efforts to maintain our historic character,” Magnuson said.

His father, Harry Magnuson, helped get the entire Idaho mining town on the National Register of Historic Places.

The commission must approve construction and alteration of structures, including signs.

Dorwin Hinman, former commission chairman, disapproved of the more commercial nature of the revised sign and especially the fact that it was changed without permission.

“I’m disappointed the way it came out, but it’s over,” he said Thursday. “I feel like the sign should have gone back the way it was.”

The commission approved construction of the billboard, with its “Historic Wallace” wording, in 1993. In the new version, those words are much smaller and the Best Western motel logo is included.

The dominant words are “Silver Country,” the name of the advertising firm that promotes Wallace as the center of 1,000 miles of snowmobile trails.

Magnuson is president of Silver Country.

The $300 fine is the only one ever levied by the commission in the memory of Hinman, who served on it for eight years.

“It was a token fine, but it was a fine,” he said.

Hinman will take a seat on the City Council next week. He said the sign variance was scheduled for discussion in December, at the last commission meeting over which he presided.

, DataTimes