Lockport sign law points in 2 directions
Mayor favors it, planners hold off
LOCKPORT — Mayor Michael W. Tucker pushed Wednesday for action within a week on a new sign ordinance for the city, but the Planning Board pushed back, and thus the new law will be discussed for at least a couple of weeks.
Charlene Seekins-Smith, Planning Board chairwoman, said her group will hold work sessions Tuesday morning and again July 7 and 14 to hash over a draft ordinance presented to them by Corporation Counsel John J. Ottaviano.
The Common Council was to have voted on the new law next Wednesday, but that won’t happen now.
Ottaviano’s draft, based in part on ideas he found in sign laws in towns from Amherst and Clarence to Canandaigua and Saranac Lake, called for a three-member Planning Board subcommittee to meet twice monthly to handle sign applications without submitting them to the full board.
Seekins-Smith said her board opposes that idea. “We feel we don’t need a sign review board with a strong ordinance,” she said.
And although all the members complimented Ottaviano’s effort, they made it clear that it still lacks detail on what is and isn’t acceptable.
The Common Council passed a moratorium on new signs in the city June 4 after complaints from businesses that the Planning Board was merely using its own members’ individual taste in accepting or rejecting designs.
Board member David C. Chamberlain said the new draft still doesn’t give the board anything concrete to use in making sign decisions. It merely says signs are to be compatible with the type of building and with the surrounding prop-
erties.
“What is an acceptable sign with colors and letters?” Chamberlain asked. “You haven’t addressed where we do have a problem.”
In many places, a sign maker can present a design to a building inspector and walk out with a permit, said Chris McCaffrey, owner of Ulrich Sign Co., who was given an advance copy of the draft, since his is the largest sign shop in Lockport.
“This is the only municipality where every sign goes to a board,” McCaffrey said. He advised the city to choose some acceptable colors for various districts of the city. For example, the Village of Williamsville has four sanctioned color combinations for signs, he said.
Tucker said, “You’re going to need some discretion. There’s no way we could put all the variables on paper. . . . I don’t want everything to be the same. That would be ridiculous. But I would like things to be similar.”
On another topic, the Council agreed to sponsor the Medina Railroad Museum in its $2.5 million state grant application for a proposed transportation museum.
The Medina group, which runs excursion trains to Lockport, had proposed constructing a museum on the Dussault Foundry site, a brownfield the city is about to foreclose upon.
Tucker said the city incurs no obligation by sponsoring the application to the Transportation Enhancement Program.
“I don’t even know at the end of the day if we want it [at Dussault],” the mayor said. “We will redevelop it, but I don’t want to lock myself in.”
