By Martin Allen
BELLEVILLE – Trenton and Frankford businesses may soon face regulation about what colours are used on their storefronts.
Barney Goldberg in his store Studio B.
The Quinte West Community Improvement Plan offers financial incentives for storeowners to keep their buildings looking good through signage and choice of storefront colours. If the initiative passes, any store looking for city money will have to follow a colour palette for its storefront. The palette, based on Ontario heritage colours, is already in use in the nearby town of Cobourg.
The colour palette adopted by the town of Cobourg is the one that businesses in Trenton and Frankford may soon have to choose from.
Since 2005 the Community Improvement Plan has allocated more than $600,000 for storefront improvements.
Barney Goldberg, who owns Trenton clothing store Studio B, says he feels the proposal is fair for business owners, in that it still leaves the decision on paint colours up to them.
“Business owners can choose the colour they want, so long as they don’t ask the city for money,” Goldberg told QNet News. “It’s democratic that way. Is it less democratic by having the city impose a colour selection on you if you ask the city for money? I suppose if you’re asking the city for cash, they have a right to get something for it.”
He added: “The city’s palette is very large. I’ve seen it. The colours are a bit neutral, but then again, it’s a bit easier on the eye and a little more co-ordinated.”
Dawn Hill of L’Auberge de France, a bakery and restaurant in Trenton, said she is not yet sure whether she is in favour of the plan.
“I guess so long as you’re one of those lucky businesses that happens to find a colour you could use within the palette,” the plan is a good one, she said. But her own business would prefer the colours of the French flag – red, white and blue – and they are not part of the colour palette.
Overall, the plan could be helpful for Quinte West, Hill said.
“It might put Trenton on the map again. But who knows?”
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