Paint It Black

To diminish the role of an architectural review board to preserve the aesthetic of a downtown or neighborhood is to ignore the success that many villages have found in protecting themselves from big box store development and residential projects that test the limits of what is reasonable on the many small lots found near downtown centers.

In Sag Harbor Village, a 2009 code revision for its downtown specifically honed in on the community’s desire to maintain the small and varied retail and restaurant establishments that had created a vibrant and robust business district, beneficial to local business owners and residents alike. One of many tools that code revision relied on was the village’s ability to use Historic Preservation and Architectural Review Board standards to maintain the code through regulation of building storefronts and signage to deter big box stores that might rely on specific branding to advertise their new locations.

That said, Sag Harbor Village remains a diverse landscape of store frontages and signage, and while the code has proven effective in myriad ways, most everyone in Sag Harbor would tell you the real key to its success is that many — not all — of its businesses remain locally owned, or owned by residents who have adopted Sag Harbor in the last 15 years as a community of their own.

In East Hampton, on October 26, Honest Man Restaurant Group owner Mark Smith will appear before the town’s ARB for the fourth time to gain approval to paint the wood paneling on the front of the former Indian Wells Tavern black for a relocated Rowdy Hall, an East Hampton institution that is planning to move to Amagansett.

Rowdy Hall has always been painted black, with gold lettering — arguably an important piece of branding for a local business that has employed and served thousands over its decades-long history.

Walking down Main Street in Amagansett, one is treated to a variety of textures and colors. While many buildings are painted white on wood, others boast dark brown and red brick of varying conditions. There is white stucco, plain wood facades, again of varying conditions, and then there is the Stephen Talkhouse, in all of its dilapidated glory (and this is meant with the highest praise). Orange Crush has neon orange and blue lettering on its awning and signage, just a few steps down from where Smith hopes to reopen his local institution.

The truth is, while the ARB is required to weigh the pros and cons of an application with the goal of ensuring the historic aesthetic of Amagansett’s downtown is maintained, this remains a subjective process when it comes to paint colors — there is no list of approved colors in its code. If Smith were proposing a technicolor — or even white, neon blue and orange — façade, or a new modern building in place of what has been a pub-like structure for some time now, opposition to the proposal might seem less myopic and more reasonable. But as it stands now, on a building with a frontage that is designed to look like a pub — large windows dominate its exterior, not the paneling that will be painted — it is hard to see how a black coat of paint is going to somehow transform Amagansett into something different than it is today.

What has transformed East Hampton and Amagansett, in the long run, is the lack of year-round businesses operated by good people like Smith and his partners. It is one of many reasons why so many year-round residents stand in support behind them — because they know what is at stake and believe that a beige, white and gray downtown isn’t much of a downtown when most businesses are papered up and closed nine months of the year.

It’s time to let Smith and Rowdy Hall keep its branding and let them paint it black.