A variation of my letter shown below appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer on Thursday. I was responding to a local resident calling for a boycott of Panda North. I would like to ask my friends and neighbors to show support for this fine family-owned restaurant whose owners and staff have been respectful of us and served us for 27 years, and have not been “disrespectful” as the previous letter-writer had suggested. These folks should not suffer because of mis-information.
Please continue to patronize Panda North … after more than a quarter-century here, they deserve our support.
http://www.reformer.com/letterstotheeditor/ci_28782064/letter-no-reason-boycott
No reason for a boycott
Editor of the Reformer:
This is in response to a local resident’s Aug. 27 letter accusing Panda North restaurant and its owners of “disrespecting” the Brattleboro community and calling for a boycott. This is strong language, and strong measures suggested for what is probably an unfounded accusation.
In business in Brattleboro for more than a quarter-century, Panda North is one of our best and most popular restaurants; one of my top three personal favorites. Everyone in my family enjoys it; we will continue to dine there on holidays, birthdays, and special occasions, when we often see our friends and colleagues showing up there for the same reasons. Their management and staff are always friendly and professional, and their delicious east Asian cuisine features a wide selection, reasonably priced. I’ve done a bit of ‘homework’, and it appears they fulfill their legal and ethical obligations as a local business. They even contested and quite rightly forced another local competing restaurant to drop the unfair name ‘Panda East’ from its name not long ago.
So my sense is that Panda North’s owners are not showing any disrespect at all, so I think the letter-writer’s suggestion they be boycotted seems pretty extreme. The funny story how the sign got changed from STEAK HOUSE to TEA has long been part of our local lore; the story is notable for how Panda North’s owners obeyed the law “to the letter.”
And much to my relief, it appears that the owner family also have their ducks lined up in a row; I’m happy to hear that decades later, they have finally gotten approval to use all ten letter-slots in the grandfathered sign and replace STEAK HOUSE with PANDA NORTH. No more unsightly empty metal-framed spaces around the vestigial word TEA.
Like most of us, I deeply value our community’s and state’s laws and ordinances about commercial signs — they help make Vermont an unusually beautiful state as viewed from our scenic highways and byways. The laws are good, but Panda North enjoys a well-justified ‘grandfathered’ exception. Let’s give credit where it’s due, value their service to the community, and continue to patronize Panda North, their owners, and their workers. I esteem people at least as much as natural beauty, and all these good folks wish to do now is make the best and most reasonable use of the sign they already have, which, because it was ‘grandfathered’ in at its current size under the law, should be entirely legal.
I’m sure the new sign panels will be simple, with empty space around the letters. Perhaps some local artists who feel much the same as I do would like to volunteer to hand-embellish some of that empty space just a bit?
John Wilmerding, Brattleboro, Sept. 4
Boycott the ones who deserve it.
I don’t normally go to Panda North but will definitely consider supporting them now. Any business that takes a stand against the tyranny of this state’s ridiculous anti business laws and can continue to do business deserves the support of the common man who is also oppressed by the state.
This is just like the mural on the barn at Exit 6 a few years back. A form of art, which is supposedly supported by these communities was labeled a billboards by some pinhead in Montpeculiar. And so the fight began. Of course there was no common sense in the situation like the fact that the sign couldn’t even be seen from the highway because it was at the end of a half mile exit ramp. But it still had to go to the central Kommittee in Montpeculiar to be resolved.
When will we ever really be free?
Oppressed by the State?
The state doesn’t always oppress.
Like I said, I’m a fan of the anti-billboard laws. They help make Vermont different. Otherwise you’d have people buying roadside land speculating they can put billboards up there. Then our state would look a lot like other places where they don’t try to preserve the scenic aspects of their landscape.
Even the great plains are impressive. The billboards along the highways out there aren’t. They are all over the place. They say anything their owners want them to say within reason and freedom of speech, which is not anything and everything. I’d rather keep my eyes on the road and be able to glance occasionally at the kind of roadside prospect that the Lakota (Sioux) enjoyed.
Please don't boycott! :(
Oh my, please do not boycott such lovely people! Panda North is beloved, and they will get the signage thing all sorted out I am sure! Boycott??? Sheesh…..
Pandas
I’ve enjoyed Panda North, especially since the women took over there. Good service and the food is just what I expect.
The sad, dancing Statue of Liberty shilling for tax returns each spring down the road bugs me more than their grandfathered sign. : )
agreed
about the dancing SoL. Not a huge Panda North patron, but totally support their sign efforts! A certain amount of signage is crucial for business success and local lore is what makes small town living fun. The history of the sign issue makes for great storytelling.
Okay, the Panda North boycott is over.
I will say no more.
Eureka!
If Vidda says it, then it must be so.
Oxymoron?
Agreed Chris. There’s nothing that can be made to adjoin Liberty and Taxation.
They are off the road and
They are off the road and quite invisible from the street. As long as it’s not a garish neon sign seems the town could help them out here. It’s sort of a town landmark as I’ve found, people often associate the restaurant with the town. More than once in discussion the restaurant comes up. A few years ago I was in eastern New York state and was asked where I lived. When I said Brattleboro the woman I was talking to got very excited and said she had been through here years ago and was Panda North, that wonderful Chinese restaurant still here. She has always planned a return visit to town for the sole purpose of going there again. She raved about how much fun she and her group had eating there and how great the food is. Didn’t ask if they had Tea.
A little background information –
(For those like me, who don’t keep up with the newspapers)
Here’s the article that started the ball rolling:
Panda North to remove “Tea” sign and put up new sign for restaurant
DRB sides with Panda North on sign dispute By Howard Weiss-Tisman Posted: 08/18/2015
BRATTLEBORO — The owners of Panda North will be toasting with more than just tea after winning a dispute with the town’s zoning administrator over the restaurant’s 45-foot-high sign.
The Development Review Board Monday overturned Zoning Administrator Brian Bannon’s determination that the Panda North “Tea” sign could not be refurbished because the damage to the existing sign exceeded one-third of the sign’s total value.
Bannon informed the business earlier this year that the sign had been damaged and would have to come down.
The sign was installed before 1988, when the zoning regulations were adopted, and therefore the sign, which exceeds the height limitations, is “grandfathered” in and allowed to stand. But the town’s zoning regulations say that if a nonconforming sign is damaged to the extent that the cost of repairing or restoration will exceed one-third the replacement value then the sign must come down.
Bannon inspected the sign and found panels broken and lights out. He argued that the damage to the panels exceeded one-third the value of the lighted portion of the sign, but Panda North said the entire structure should be considered when determining the value of the sign.
The DRB Monday sided with Panda North and that decision now allows the restaurant to update the sign.
This is not the first time the town of Brattleboro lost a court case over the sign.
The sign was built in 1962 and originally displayed the word “Steak $5.99” before the letters “S” and “K” and the numbers were removed in 1990 shortly after the former steak house became a Chinese Restaurant.
The town, back then, wanted Michael Lacroix, the then-owner of the property to remove the sign because steak was no longer being sold at $5.99. He instead changed the sign to “Tea.”
The town was not amused and took him to court, but an environmental judge found in 1998 that the “Tea” sign could stay.
Panda North manager Katharine Chen told the DRB Monday that the company wants to put up new, white panels with a sign that advertises the restaurant.
The DRB spent most of the time at Monday night’s hearing discussing the value of the sign, the estimated cost of replacing it fully and the costs associated with changing the wording of the sign.
Ralph Randall , owner of Neopa Signs of Swanzey, N.H., told the DRB that replacing the entire structure would cost almost $72,000, while taking down the “Tea” sign and replacing it with “Panda North” would be about $9,000.
Even if the poles were kept up and just the lighted portion was changed, Randall said the work would still be less than one-third of what he estimated the value of the box, which Randall would be about $37,000 to install.
“The sign has to be, in our opinion, the whole sign including all the supports,” said Bruce Hesselbach, an attorney representing Panda North at the hearing. “Even if you were to use just the sign part of it, it’s still not damaged over one-third of its replacement value. We don’t think the violation should be upheld.”
Bannon, however, said the DRB in the past has only considered the lighted portion of other signs when making decisions about zoning regulations.
“If you took away the sign you’d have two posts, and would those two posts attract attention to the business?” Bannon said. “I would say ‘No. It would just be two posts.'”
Chen also told the board that Panda North was considering updating the sign back in 2014, before Bannon issued his violation.
Hesselbach said Tuesday that Panda North would wait for the DRB to issue its final decision before starting work on the sign.
Here’s the response that started the “Boycott”
Brattleboro Reformer Posted: 09/02/2015 03:27:31 PM EDT
Local business disrespects community
Editor of the Reformer:
I find it surprising and counter-productive that a local business, Panda North, continues to not respect and indeed disregard our local community’s and our state’s ideals. Specifically, Panda North and its lawyers have appealed to the Brattleboro Development Review Board to retain its landscape-degrading 45-foot-tall “TEA” sign, a sign that in no way complies with Brattleboro’s sign ordinance. While we have had many discussions on sign regulations, I believe that on the whole we all appreciate the value and benefit of Brattleboro’s and Vermont’s sign regulations. The absence of billboards and over-sized signs in our state and town is widely envied by visitors to our state.
Technically “grandfathered” or not, now that Panda North needs to update its sign, rather than be supportive of our community and conform, as other businesses do, to what our community has accepted as a reasonable sign ordinance, Panda North is choosing to disregard the community’s wishes. Until Panda North can support and respect our community, I cannot support and patronize Panda North. I hope others will agree with me and boycott Panda North until they remove their offensive sign.
The rest is history.
Humor
I always found the original story humorous: The little guy winning over bureaucracy. I think I would have found it less laughable if I knew that the “little guy” was Michael La Croix.
However, I do find it pleasant that we don’t have to look at billboards. A quick trip to Keene brings it home with the adverts for Injury Lawyers, Bra Fitters, etc.
A trip on the New York Thruway is overkill.