Sign of the times in Scarborough

Chicago Dogs owner Joe Palmieri stands with the
sandwich board used to advertise his restaurant to passers-by
on Route 1 in Scarborough. On Monday, the town’s code
enforcement staff made Palmieri and other business
owners along the strip remove all similar signs.

SCARBOROUGH — It may be the middle of summer, but Scarborough official are doing a little spring cleaning.

On Monday, a code enforcement official traveled Route 1 in town, making businesses take down sandwich board-style signs placed along the roadside. Scarborough zoning rules say that such signs, for which there is a $35 one-time permit fee, may be placed no more than 15 feet from the main entrance to a business.

That rule, according to Assistant Town Planner Jay Chace, was adopted in 2009 at the behest of the Scarborough Economic Development Corp. “Of course, we want to build business in Scarborough,” said the development group’s executive director, Harvey Rosenfeld, who lobbied the town to allow the signs, which were then forbidden. “But we have to do it in a safe manner. Sandwich boards caught in a big gust of wind and ending up in the middle of Route 1 can be dangerous.”

Still, at least on business owner, Joe Palmieri, of Chicago Dogs at 285 U.S. Route 1, is seeing red due to the enforcement of the 15-foot rule. Fifteen feet from restaurant’s main entrance is the middle of his parking lot, Palmieri notes, which is still more than 50 feet short of Route 1.

“The problem is, the town’s design standards required all these berms and plantings between my building and the road, which make my place real tough to see,” Palmieri said Monday afternoon.

“I’m not blasting the guy who came by and told us to take down our sign. He’s just doing his job,” said Palmieri. “But Scarborough has a reputation for being a real tough place to do business and this is just another example of why that is.”

Chace said traffic-heavy Route 1 really isn’t the place for sandwich boards, which Scarborough limits to 3 feet in height and 8 square feet of surface area.

“That’s really more of a pedestrian scale,” he said. “Route 1 is an area that’s really intended for free-standing signs to draw people in off the street. The comprehensive plan, the zoning, the design standards, they all talk about trying to reduce the clutter along Route 1.”

“I know what Scarborough is trying to do, they don’t want Route 1 to look like garbage and I couldn’t agree more,” said Palmieri. “But I can’t afford a $15,000 marquee. I do what I can and a dumb little ordinance like this, is that really what the town wants to do to small business in this economy?”

According to the town’s zoning administrator, Dave Grysk, enforcement officer John Reed vistited “a bunch” of businesses Monday, although he was just in between inspections and not on a specific sign detail. In fact, while he advised Chicago Dogs of the 15-foot rule, he reportedly did not cite Palmieri for not having paid the $35 permit fee, which he says he would have “gladly paid” if he had known about it.

“You know, all we do is let people know about the 15-foot rule,” said Grysk. “We’re sorry if that does not work for them and I understand that for a lot of them on Route 1 it may not. But signs have been a big issue ever since I came here more than 20 years ago. There have been a lot of changes over the years and a lot more has been allowed over time.

“Time was, you couldn’t even have an ‘Open’ flag,” said Grysk.

Palmieri said he bought his $300 sandwich sign three weeks ago, and that it’s made a difference since he began placing it just off the sidewalk on Route 1. Business in the first three weeks of July was up 5 percent compared to June, he said. More tellingly, he said, traffic Monday evening was “down at least 50 percent” from the previous week.

“I don’t know how much of that is directly related to the sign, of course,” said Palmieri. “But I have had people come in over the last couple of weeks and say they never knew we were here until they saw the sign out by the road.”

Chicago Dogs has been in Scarborough for seven years. Palmieri has owned the business for almost five years. However, he now says that, given this “final straw” he is seriously thinking about moving his operation, with nine employees, to South Portland.

The area around the Maine Mall, or along Broadway, would be more visible, he said, with or without a sandwich board. Palmieri said he will decide by this fall where Chicago Dogs will be located come spring.

“I’d like to have some sort of common-sense approach here in Scarborough,” he said. “There’s got to be some common ground where we can meet. But I know how the wheels of government work. Any ordinance change they initiate now will take three to four months to complete and, by that time, my season will be over.”

A change may come even slower than that.

“I can only say that’s not something that’s on my radar at the moment,” said Chace.