Businesses taken aback by sign rule

Town set to enforce bylaw written in 1996

Karen Masterson, owner of Big Fresh Cafe in Framingham, is trying to save the sign that alerts Route 9 drivers to her eatery. (David Kamerman/Globe Staff/ file 2005)

Karen Masterson owns the Big Fresh Cafe, a small organic eatery in the Wal-Mart plaza between Routes 9 and 30 in Framingham. Drivers wouldn't know it was there, sandwiched between the big chains and other businesses that populate the dense stretch of retail operations, but for the sign. Big Fresh is one of a handful of plaza tenants, including Tennessee's BBQ, the Lotus Flower Chinese restaurant, and Gold Star India restaurant, that have their names posted beneath the blue-and-white Wal-Mart logo on a towering sign on Route 9.

The problem is Framingham officials have unearthed a bylaw that prohibits the very sign Masterson and the others say they depend on to keep their businesses visible to the heaviest traffic.

At the urging of activists looking to keep the skyline uncluttered, the bylaw was drafted in 1996 by a town committee and approved by the state attorney general's office the same year. It set regulations for dimensions and placement of signs in Framingham, and established a 10-year sunset clause, providing businesses with existing signs a timeline to meet the new rules.

The Wal-Mart sign, including the Big Fresh portion, was problematic from the day the bylaw went into effect. The plaza has a Route 30 address, and under the bylaw, was not allowed a sign on Route 9 at all. Such "off-premise" signs did not even qualify for the sunset clause, officials said.

For lack of funding, the bylaw was not actively enforced until 2006, when it was brought up to town officials by the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce. The idea, said Steve Daley, a principal of Framingham-based Metro West Realty LLC, was to make businesses and officials aware of the waning sunset clause. Daley is a member of the town's Sign Bylaw Review Committee, which sponsored an update of the bylaw that was approved in December. The new version extended the sunset clause to 2012 in an effort to give some businesses more opportunity to modify and update their signs.

"The argument was, simply: Don't come knocking on the door of a sign owner in 2006 and say that the sun has set on their sign and that they need to pull it down, until you've cleaned up this bylaw," said Daley.

Framingham now intends to aggressively enforce the bylaw, which includes dealing with several "off-premise" signs, Daley said.

That includes the Big Fresh sign, which faces an order to be dismantled by July 1.

"We found out through Wal-Mart that there were rumblings that the town was going to follow up on this," said Masterson. "The point with this sign is that it's been there for at least 20 years. The businesses here rely on that."

Dave Bara, owner of Tennessee's, said he has already experienced the pinch of decreased visibility along Route 9.

"I had my sign down last year because I was refurbishing it," said Bara. "We had a lot of customers come in and say, 'Oh, I thought you were closed down,' because the sign was gone. It happened two or three times a week."

Masterson understands the town's concerns, but believes that the businesses in that plaza should be grandfathered. "I'm not arguing that it's not off premise," she said. "I'm just saying, why wouldn't you have grandfathered existing signage since that's what businesses have relied on?"

It will be a challenge to fight the bylaw. The only option for businesses under pressure may be to argue to the town that because their business was permitted to have the sign before the clause was established, they should be allowed to keep it.

"Someone will get offended enough to take that approach, but I think the town feels that they will prevail on that item," said Daley.

Daly's own business is not exempt. One of his signs will also have to come down, at an estimated cost of more than $100,000, he said. "I sympathize, because in most cases people don't know their sign is nonconforming. But I can't sit on the committee and fight against it at the same time."

For now, it's a battle that those small businesses must fight themselves.

"I'm not trying to be difficult," said Masterson. "I'm just trying to save our business."

Contact Manny Veiga at mveiga@ globe.com.