Jon Donk is the art collector at Gallery 46 on Main Street, an extension of the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. His business has a clicker on the door, meaning he tracks how many people walk into the shop every day.

“The minute those sandwich boards went down,” Donk said, “our business went down. It’s not just us, too. It seems like every business along Main Street was affected by it.”

Because of Donk’s clicker, he was able to provide hard evidence to the Lake Placid Business Association of exactly how the removal of A-frames impacted the gallery. Donk gave the Enterprise a graph that showed the number of visitors into the gallery each week over the course of two years. After the sandwich boards were talking down, the 2017 numbers slightly decreased when compared to the 2016 numbers, aside from the week when Lake Placid hosted Skate America.

“I never thought I’d care so much about sandwich boards,” he said.

Because sandwich boards violate sign codes, Main Street businesses often lean them against their storefronts, out of the way of sidewalk traffic. (Enterprise photo — Griffin Kelly)

To address the growing concerns from local businesses and the LPBA on signage codes, the village of Lake Placid will hold a hearing Monday in the North Elba Town Hall at 5:15 p.m., and the town of North Elba will have a hearing Tuesday in the same building at 6:30 p.m. The town and village boards will then come together and decide whether they want to amend the code.

There are four planning districts that adhere to signage codes within the town and village: the Village Center (Main Street), the Gateway Corridor (Saranac Avenue), the Old Military (Road) Corridor and the Rural Countryside. However, the two hearings are really concerned with Main Street and Saranac Avenue.

The current code prohibits A-frames on Main Street and the Gateway Corridor. Flags are allowed in the Gateway Corridor but not on Main Street. The Gateway Corridor also allows flags as long as they are at least 7 feet high as to not hit people or obscure vision, adhere to size specifics and display a brief temporary message like “Open.” Flags for events such as the Lake Placid Horse Show and Ironman triathlon are often hung outside businesses.

North Elba town Supervisor Roby Politi said he and the rest of the town board don’t have a problem with sandwich boards.

“They don’t pose a safety problem for the town,” he said. “Most of [the signs] are on private property in the town, while the ones in the village are on the Main Street sidewalk. As long as they’re uniform in size, shape, color, we have no problem with it.”

Politi also said the town has never received a complaint from residents about the signs. He said the codes on sandwich boards only started getting enforced when Michael Orticelle became code enforcement officer in 2017, replacing longtime officer James Morganson

“Part of my job is to enforce the code equitably,” Orticelle said. “The interesting part is the business community was exceptionally compliant. Of course, they were questioning why the village started enforcing it again, but the plan to enforce the code had been in development for many years.”

Orticelle said one of the main concerns of the village with sandwich boards on Main Street was accessibility.

“You need to be able to maintain a 6 foot clearance,” he said. “so wheelchairs could pass each other comfortably.”

Orticelle doesn’t write the codes himself, and he said, “Everybody should have the same opportunity to promote their business in some way.”

LPBA President Lori Fitzgerald said sandwich boards and flags are integral to drawing in business.

“They’re absolutely a good way to promote individual businesses,” she said, “and without them, it makes everything on Main Street look flat and deserted. Business decreased when the signs had to be removed, and that’s not sustainable.”

The LPBA is asking to allow sandwich boards in front of businesses on Main Street as long as they have 8 feet of sidewalk clearance, and to allow shops that don’t have the clearance to hang flags at least 7 feet high. Any new sign would have to be presented by the North Elba-Lake Placid Joint Review Board for approval.

Fitzgerald said to make this approval process simpler for local businesses, the LPBA has volunteered to design signs that fit the board’s requirements for size, shape and look, and then sell them to whoever would like one.

“There will be multiple designs, too, so it’s doesn’t look like ‘The Stepford Wives,'” she said chuckling.

Logos will be limited on these signs.

“We’re advocating that the only logo on the sign can be the business’s logo,” she said. “For example, we don’t want it to say Bud Light or Tito’s.”

The village thinks the signs make clutter, according to Fitzgerald, but she said there aren’t sidewalk traffic jams too often.

Tim Robinson owns and operates Terry Robard’s Wines & Spirits on Saranac Avenue, the Gateway Corridor.

“From my end, I’m off the beaten path,” Robinson said. “I would put signs out by the road because you really need to turn your head to notice that our business is even there, and we obviously don’t want people turning their heads too much while their driving.”

Saranac Avenue is really more for cars, according to Robinson.

Still he notices that sandwich boards increase sales.

“We’re one of the exclusive retailers in the area for Gristmill Distillery in Keene,” he said, “but once the codes were really enforced I had to take down my Gristmill sign, and because of that, sales of Gristmill have suffered.”

Robinson said something as simple as a sign with an arrow that says “Free wine tastings” closer to the road is enough to draw in plenty of customers.

Village Mayor Craig Randall said signs and other promotional materials have a tendency to clutter public walkways.

“For many years they weren’t obnoxious,” he said, “but then we started seeing tables and chairs appearing, and they started choking up the sidewalks.

“All of our Main Street storefronts have windows, but they feel they need to be in the pedestrian’s face.”

Randall said there’s no question that retail sales on Main Street have decreased over the years, but he thinks that has less to do with signs and more to do with how people shop in the modern day.

“Maybe the sandwich boards help a little bit,” he said, “but I think their concerns about declining sales might have to do with, let’s face it, the internet taking away Main Street business.

“The internet sales and the Amazons of the world, I think they’re knocking Main Street right in the head.”

Randall said retail shops on Main Street tend to be replaced by restaurants and food vendors. He thinks this evolution in shopping and clientele is nothing unusual.

Randall has a similar thought process to Orticelle. The prohibitions on sandwich boards and flags are written in the code book, and as mayor, he wants to follow the rules. However, he does want to allow local businesses to draw in customers.

Personally, Randall said he thinks sandwich boards are all right as long as they don’t infringe on the public sidewalk. He echoed Orticelle’s remarks about wheelchairs being able to pass each other as well as saying that the sidewalks should be clear enough to allow street sweeping equipment.

If sandwich boards are permitted in the future, Randall wants them to be safe and would prefer for the signs to be anchored in some way as to not blow over and hit people or fall in the street.