Galveston merchant to city: Go fly a kite
Longtime shopkeeper faces $2,000 daily fine for displaying wares
GALVESTON — Stephen Newberry ran a 50-foot-long multihued wind sock up the flagpole in front of his kite store on the Galveston seawall at 9 a.m. sharp Thursday, a ritual he’s repeated every day for 30 years.
But these days, there’s a dose of defiance mixed in after city officials paid him a visit on Independence Day and warned him that if he didn’t stop flying kites outside of the store, he would be fined $2,000 a day.
“The only way there will not be kites flying going forward is if there is not enough wind,” Newberry said. “Code enforcement showed up on July Fourth and were very intimidating. They walked in and were extremely rude.”
For years, Galveston officials have lamented the somewhat shabby welcome visitors to this resort city receive as they sweep off Interstate 45 into town on Broadway Boulevard and are greeted by cheap banners, broken signs and blighted buildings.
Newberry’s shop, Kites Unlimited, a narrow establishment sandwiched between a burger joint and convenience store, is on Seawall Boulevard, steps from the beach where kites fluttering in the sea breeze are as much a part of the experience as sand in one’s sandals.
Late Thursday, Edee Harvey, 58,
of Galveston was stuffing a 7-foot shark kite and a colorful wind sock shaped like a jellyfish in her trunk, a gift for her husband on his birthday. She said she had no sympathy for city officials trying to force Newberry to take down his kites.
“It’s sort of a kite institution,” Harvey said. “It’s the beach. Kites are part of the beach.”
As the beach season hits its stride with a lot of sun and no seaweed, at least not yet, Newberry might be suffering the unintended consequences of efforts to enforce city codes that in the past were flouted by local businesses without fear of consequence. The crackdown reflects the challenge of sprucing up the city without hurting local establishments. Instead of ugly billboards and boarded-up storefronts, the bureaucrats have trained their sights on one of the beachfront’s most colorful icons.
Law targets eyesores
Mayor Jim Yarbrough and nearly all the six council members elected last year campaigned on improving the city’s appearance. Yarbrough recently ordered crews to begin mowing the medians at the entrance to the city on I-45, and the council last month approved $2 million to restore oak trees killed by Hurricane Ike in 2008 to the esplanade that runs down the center of Broadway.
The city passed a new sign ordinance in March aimed at eliminating some of the most unsightly signage and began enforcing city codes for the first time in years. A notice warning of a crackdown went out two days before city inspectors paid Newberry a visit.
“That was the first step in cleaning up Broadway because this is one of the major thoroughfares in the city,” Councilwoman Carolyn Sunseri said.
Sunseri said the ordinance was never aimed at business persons like Newberry and that she would try to make sure his business is not affected. She said the ordinance might need to be amended, noting that it inadvertently prevents businesses from flying company flags, another unintended consequence.
Merchants interviewed on Broadway welcomed the enforcement effort.
“I love it,” said Steve Smith, store manager at City Electric Supply. “I wish they would beautify it some more.”
Larry O’Neal, regional manager for Coburn Supply Co., said: “I like it. I guess there could be some extremes, but what they asked us to do made us look a lot better.”
Newberry called Sunseri a week before the Fourth of July confrontation with code enforcement officials. A single, polite inspector had warned him to take down his kites, advising him that only the U.S. and Texas flags could be flown under the new city ordinance. Sunseri brokered an arrangement allowing Newberry to fly his kites in an empty lot next door on the Fourth of July, typically a big business day.
He was surprised when two code enforcement officers, a man and a woman, entered his store on the holiday and demanded the kites be immediately taken down.
Newberry said he and his employee were polite, even offering them water, but that they continued to be confrontational and called police. The enforcement officers’ aggressive demeanor left his office manager in tears, he said. As a patrol car pulled into the parking lot, the two code enforcement officers each raised an arm and slapped the other’s palm in a high-five salute, Newberry said.
“Why he called the police is a mystery to everybody,” he said.
The police took no action and appeared sympathetic to Newberry’s plight, he said.
Galveston Planning Director Rick Vasquez could not be reached for comment.
Without kites flying outside his business to attract tourists, he has no business, Newberry said.
Threat to business
“Nobody even knows they want one until they see one,” Newberry said. “If the city takes that away from me, they take away the ability of the business to exist.”
Business was so bad on the days he complied with the ordinance that he figures losses of at least $10,000.
Newberry consulted an attorney, who told him that the city could not suddenly enact a law forcing him to change the way he has done business for 30 years.
So Monday he put out the colorful array of kites in different shapes and sizes as he has always done. The city called Tuesday and threatened him again with fines and police but so far has not made good on the threats, he said.
His attorney is discussing the problem with city officials, he said. Now he’s waiting to see what the city will do.
At the kite store Wednesday evening, Andrea Bryant, who was vacationing with her family from Shreveport, La., said she got the urge to buy a kite when she saw the multicolored wind socks flying from the flagpole out front. She purchased a blue butterfly kite with a streaming tail to fly on the beach.
“I wouldn’t know why they would want to take these down,” Bryant, 50, said. “They are gorgeous.”