OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is from a frustrated downtown Orillia store owner in response to the article, 'Downtown sign rules 'ridiculous,' says cannabis shop GM,' published March 16.
You can't fight City Hall, but when bylaws are created and enforced by a group who favour the establishment ... well this is how we arrive at the signage chaos that is one of downtown Orillia's many miseries.
In part it’s due to some bylaws being nonsensical, but mostly it has to do with enforcement or rather to whom the bylaws are applied. How this small geographic area has so many controlling bodies overseeing it: the EDC, BIA, DOMB, downtown ambassador (program), city council, sign committees. But the issue is how bylaw and legislative services ignore and overlook some while micromanaging others.
It’s disappointing to see another new business face the wrath of Orillia’s sign bylaw and another getting grief for having a neon sign. How is it so contentious to have small businesses making decisions that are best for themselves?
Colour, movement, light, a certain branding, a font, a look ... those choices should all be within the creative realm of a business owner. Some businesses are astute enough to not even set up in downtown Orillia. A mayoral candidate, in the second last election race, mentioned that as a part of his opening speech; that a business had chosen not to even start in Orillia based on the existing sign bylaws here!
A business sells neon signs and places them on display on the inside/side wall of its storefront but gets charged and convicted. Neon is not considered “heritage” enough even though the point was made by another business that Orillia, in its day, was adorned with neon. The Golden Dragon and Geneva Event Centre are two places with iconic signs that come to mind.
Orillia’s Downtown Management Board was involved in establishing the sign bylaw because they were asked to have input; this would have been the 2014-2018 membership. The worst thing was that they were part of recommending “grandfathering” in signs which removed some of those members from meeting up with new “heritage” requirements set up by the new bylaw.
Yes I know this sounds like an oxymoron, “new heritage”, but it describes perfectly what Liquidation Nation had to go through to meet the heritage requirement. Check out the wooden border they had to place around their lettering and try to tell me that expense was worth it to meet the “new heritage” requirements?
“Grandfathering” means the old rules apply to whatever has been established in the past and those merchants that had business signs by the year 2000 fall in that group.
Obviously more women are starting businesses since then and for immigrants, starting a business in the service or food industry is one of the easiest ways to enter the economy. In other words, these new rules affect people other than the Orillia "establishment."
It means that downtown Orillia is a hodgepodge of signs that fall in the old group with new rules applied to the rest of us. If you want to change your “grandfathered” sign you have to abide by the new rules which is a disincentive to improve your sign. Broken neon signs, whiteboard on tripods, backlit signs…this archaic excuse has in many cases grandfathered in “ugly.”
We look at the wonderful artwork that is “Streets Alive” every summer but don't enjoy the same artistic licence within our own storefronts.
I, along with 30-40 businesses, were pursued in 2017. When asked why they couldn't take one bylaw at a time and apply it to ALL of downtown (about 150-200 businesses) so it could be experienced as “fair” we were told “no that would be too much” yet some of us ended up with more than one charge!
As the owner of the building, you also get charged with whatever the tenant gets charged with. I rented my basement out at the time and had that business' sign on my main floor for obvious reasons. We were both charged with NOT having a sign on the same floor as the business. Yes you heard that right, the business in the basement wasn’t complying because it had the nerve to have its sign on the main floor where people could see it. As talented as I am, I cannot find a way to defy gravity.
Look around downtown and you realize that many businesses are also in violation of that bylaw ... their signs are at the bottom of the second floor of the building and not technically on their main floor!
Earlier I had been given notice that I had an obsolete sign. I kept the previous business sign name up because it was a similar kind of store with an established location and reputation. Makes good business sense and with all the things one has to do with starting a business I held off ... I sold their product still and continued on with the same type of business ... seamless for a while as customers knew where to come.
But the sign above where the former Sharing Place Food Bank on West Street remains ... the old backlit “Orillia Ale House” sign still there for what must be “heritage” reasons?
Another store was pursued because the name on their receipts did not match the name of the store. Again similar type of store as before, clear to everyone who shopped there where the receipt was coming from but not an “exact” match to the sign in front of the store. Problematic and unacceptable to city bureaucracy.
Our tax dollars paying salaries, uniforms, vehicles, paperwork, postage, then $10 registered letters when bylaw could have come in and spoken to us directly; Downtown Management Board staff are supposed to be the initial contact, coming to meet with us business owners face-to-face as stated in the sign bylaw.
And finally, poor Bonnefire stuck with a sidewalk sign bylaw also ... a bylaw existing for safety/clearance and to be out of the way for the sidewalk plow during the winter. Never mind that others have them out without the necessary permit sticker or during the winter or that when some of us were given notice about the condition of our sidewalks in winter a broken sidewalk sign lay outside all winter long. I drove by that sign for months, waiting for it to get noticed; guessing it got overlooked because of who it belonged to and where it was.
A pause could be put on the current sign bylaw and an overview of how it has been enforced; with a look to equity and inclusion now. We don't need more reasons for business to stay away; filled stores and a “presence” of customers is a huge help in terms of safety in numbers downtown.
Signs should be the least of our worries. Imagine if it were an eclectic mix of signs downtown keeping safety in mind? Would that be the thing that drove you away from shopping downtown?
Or would it be the litter, the paid parking/overzealous ticketing, the misbehaviour, the uneven sidewalks, the only place in Orillia that isn't guaranteed a sidewalk plow after snowfall? Hate to see all our hard work as business owners within our businesses be overlooked by the chaos outside our stores.
Ellen Wolper
Orillia
