The Great Greenwich Deflowering of ’22

It started the way so many things do, small. But then it became big. It always starts small though, doesn’t it? Just as a fire can’t start without the original tiny spark, very rarely do big things happen without something small igniting the conflagration. A driver in Sarajevo turns left instead of right and a minor royal ends up in the gun sights of a discontented anarchist and suddenly, World War I. A burglar is not very good at breaking into the Watergate Hotel and a president resigns in disgrace.

So what small to big thing could we be talking about here in Greenwich? In this case it’s about one storeowner wanting to liven up her storefront with some artificial flowers. Something which evidently annoyed maybe one person enough that this person squealed to the town that the shop owner was violating some arcane 30-year old town code. A code, which by the way, is designed to actually prohibit stores from creating signage that could be, get this, eye-catching. Hello? Isn’t the actual point of a sign ... to catch your eye?

OK, in all fairness, the connective tissue regarding retail signage in town is that it’s supposed to be subtle and innocuous because, well, that’s just what Greenwichites for decades have said is the way they want it. Besides, according to Town Planner Katie DeLuca, retail signage is supposed to be for “wayfinding” only. Or in other words, put your sign up, but keep it small, tasteful and only where someone standing right in front of it can see it.

Of course once you start to actually break down the town signage policy, it unsurprisingly can lead to contradictions. The town says that signage must be subtle and innocuous; for the purpose of allowing someone to locate and correctly identify the store they are about to walk into. Yet if the goal of signage is to help with “wayfinding,” one could point out that wayfinding is a cognitive process that humans use to orient themselves as they use the dissimilarities in objects to actively experience how they locate themselves within a defined space. Taken together however, and when the town determines that all signage should be conformist, similar and unobtrusive, then we are NOT actually encouraging wayfinding at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Subtlety and conformity actually makes wayfinding harder.

Should we expect the people who write those codes and regulations to understand the difference and recognize how they’ve contradicted themselves? Actually yes, we should. If the intent of the code was to prohibit unsightly and obnoxious storefront come-ons such as those giant inflatable wavy-armed balloons, spiraling pinwheels or bright and flashing light shows, then write the code that way. Instead, we have rules that are open to interpretation, designed to require store owners to jump though byzantine hoops for approvals, and are generally ignored until someone whines to the town.

So what now? One store put up a floral display, which irritated one person with nothing better to do with their time than complain, and now we’re facing the Great Greenwich Deflowering. Suddenly, people are taking notice all over town of merchants with the audacity to use real and artificial floral displays outside of approved holiday seasons* to make their shops more wayfinder friendly, and a not insignificant number of Greenwichites are grousing that they want the codes enforced, meaning amazingly the flowers might have to go.

(*By the way, town code specifies that Christmas holiday decorations and signage are OK, but not Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus or any other holidays. Why is that? It’s arbitrary, inconsiderate to many, and probably a violation of federal law to boot.)

Thankfully, it does look like Planning and Zoning will be taking a look at these codes to see if they need updating. Which they obviously do, because when residents heard about this one small incident leading to other locations being called out for similar violations, the question was raised: why are we picking on people trying to make a living, trying to provide great services to the town, and trying to make the town even more attractive? Haven’t small businesses been through enough recently? Common sense should prevail; let’s see if it does.