Village of Williamsville Planning & Architectural Review Board
The board capped a Read it & Eat bookshop sign at 5526 Main at 9.2 square feet — the size of the sign next door, more than twice what the code allows — instead of the nearly 13 requested. Millie’s Ice Cream won its halo-lit sign unanimously. Also: Empire Mart tabled, a Steve’s Diner sign never reached.
The Village of Williamsville allows a sign of four square feet. The sign Read it & Eat wants at 5526 Main Street is just under 13 — more than three times the maximum — and taller than the code permits besides. On Monday night the Planning & Architectural Review Board did not approve it, did not reject it, and did not send the applicant away to start over. It set a number and told him to design to it.
Ryan Kiley[3], the sign contractor, had spent the work session listening to the board talk and arrived at the microphone with arithmetic already done: keep the “bookshop” line at its current height, stretch the letters across one line instead of two, and the square footage comes out the same. One foot three inches. That answered a question the board had stopped asking.
“The real concern,” a member told him, “is that the sign that's presented is more than three times the allowable size.” Not a near miss. “It's not like you're asking us to go with six square feet or something where we feel comfortable kind of overriding.” One member was blunter about the shape of the discussion: others were floating one line because it would make the overage match the neighbour's, “that's what I heard. I'm not going to say that that's what I would want. I would want small. That's what I want.”
What broke the deadlock was the building next door. The Muscarella[3] sign — the pizza place beside the bookshop — measures 9.2 square feet, a little more than twice the allowable, and nobody on the board thinks it looks wrong. “I would probably get 8 or 9 square feet as opposed to almost 13,” one member said. “I think that's the problem, is it just looks really massive over there.” Another was willing to live with the precedent: asking for over three times is a lot, the other side is a little more than two times, “so I guess I feel like maybe that's fair to allow them to have that much.”
Kiley noted his customer hopes to open in November. The motion, when it came, granted a waiver on overall size up to 9.2 square feet — explicitly because that is what the neighbour has. Against the request, it is three square feet off and about ten inches shorter; against the code, it is more than double. It carried on a voice vote.[3]
Then came a small tangle nobody fully untied. “We still have to do an approval, right? With the waiver?” one member asked. “We thought you just did them together,” came the answer from the table; it had sounded like the permit was approved with the waiver attached. Earlier, staff had told the board a second condition on height was unnecessary — “it's up to Mark and I[3] to send it to you.” No separate approval motion was made.
Williamsville's sign code caps a sign of this type at four square feet and limits its height. Almost nothing on this stretch of Main Street is four square feet, so the board's working question is not whether to grant a waiver but how large a waiver it can defend.
That makes the adjacent sign, not the code, the operative standard. Monday's number — 9.2 square feet — was not derived from the ordinance, the building, or the lettering. It is the measured area of the pizza place next door, adopted because the board could not justify letting a newcomer exceed a neighbour it had already tolerated.
It is a defensible way to keep a streetscape consistent. It also means the published maximum tells a prospective tenant very little about what they will actually be allowed.
Ordinarily a board reviews a drawing and votes on it. Here the board inverted the sequence: rather than reject the sign and wait a month for a redesign, it voted the maximum area it would tolerate and left the design to the applicant.
“They can then go back and redesign it to meet the maximum area you're willing to grant the waiver for,” staff explained. “And if they can't, then they can come back.”
So an approval here is a budget, not a blessing. The board has approved an envelope; it has not seen, and will not vote on, the sign that eventually goes up.
The second item took about six minutes and produced a sentence the board does not say often. “To my surprise, and everyone else's, I've got no comments on this.”
Jim Papiello[3] of Allwork Sign Company[3] presented a sign for Millie's Ice Cream at 5487 Main Street. He had done the homework that the first applicant hadn't: he had read the lighting provisions, confirmed that halo lighting is permitted, and built the letters to be pinned off the wall and lit from behind so the glow matches the two signs already in that plaza. A front-lit channel sign, he told the board, “would look actually way out of place compared to the other signs,” especially on the tall wall. He brought a sample letter.
The board's questions were small. Does the red match the business's corporate colour — yes. Is the sign currently on the door permanent — no, temporary. Is the existing backer board in good shape — it looks fine. One member asked that the record say painting rather than another term, and it was so amended. The drawing carries a revision date of September 1, 2026.
Crucially, the item needed no waivers — the sign fits the code as drawn. It was approved as presented on a voice vote, seconded by Eugene Richards[3], with no opposition. The shop is trying to open this month.
A front-lit channel letter is a hollow letter with a translucent face: the light comes at you through the letter, and the letter itself reads as bright.
A halo-lit letter — sometimes called reverse-channel or backlit — is opaque on the face and open at the back. It is pinned an inch or two off the wall and lights the wall behind it, so the letter reads dark against a soft glow.
Williamsville's code permits the halo form, which is why this sign needed no waiver on lighting while a brighter equivalent would have been argued over. The practical reason the applicant gave is seasonal: by winter it is dark at 4 p.m., and a sign on that wall has to work for most of the business day.
Item 2026-PB-11, a sign permit review for Empire Mart at 5385 Main Street, got no further than the question of whether anyone had come for it. Nobody had. “They did not withdraw,” a member noted — a distinction with consequences, since a withdrawn application leaves the docket and a tabled one does not. The item was tabled on a voice vote, seconded by David Vitka[3], and will carry forward.
The October 5 agenda lists one piece of Old Business ahead of everything else: 2026-PB-08, Sign Permit Review, 5759 Main East Elevation — Steve's Diner, with blank lines printed for a motion and a second.
It does not appear in the recording. The board went from approving the September 8 minutes directly to the first item of New Business, and no motion, second, discussion or vote on 5759 Main is anywhere on the tape. The blanks on the agenda are still blank.
That matters because of how the item got there. On September 8, Steve's Diner won one sign 5–0 with a waiver and had a second tabled 5–0, after what this publication's record of that meeting described as a sustained argument about what a sign band is. A tabled item returns; this one was docketed to return Monday, and then the meeting moved past it.
There are innocent explanations — the board held a work session at 6:30 that is not in the recording, and an applicant who does not appear can see an item carried without ceremony, as Empire Mart's was. But Empire Mart's non-appearance was announced and voted on. This one was not mentioned at all. Whether 2026-PB-08 was addressed off-air, held, or simply skipped is not answerable from the public record of this meeting.
The full membership answered the roll: Colleen Leiker, Walter Pacer, Thomas Petrocelli, Eugene Richards, Wesley Stone, David Vitka and Chair Catherine Waterman-Kulpa, with Village Attorney Charles “Chip” Grieco, Building & Zoning Clerk Carol Boeck, Amherst Planning's Gary Palumbo, and trustee liaisons Jeffrey Hahn and Steven Meyer also present. Every item carried on a voice vote; no roll call was taken on anything, so no member's individual position is on the record except where noted. The recording opens mid-sentence on a member stating they were chairing in someone's absence; it does not establish whose.[3]
No discussion. At least one member abstained, explaining only that they had wanted to attend and check something. The abstainer is not identified on the recording.[3]
Printed on the agenda as the meeting's only Old Business item, with motion and second lines left blank. No mention, motion, second or vote appears anywhere in the recording. The sign was tabled 5–0 on September 8 after a dispute over the definition of a sign band. Whether it was addressed in the unbroadcast 6:30 p.m. work session, held, or skipped cannot be determined from the public record of this meeting.
The sign as submitted is just under 13 square feet against a four-square-foot maximum, and exceeds the height limit. The motion granted a waiver on overall size “up to a total square footage of 9.2” — set equal to the measured area of the adjacent Muscarella[3] sign — leaving the applicant to redesign within it. Members separately indicated they wanted the sign under two feet in height, but no height condition was attached to the motion; staff advised one was unnecessary. The recording contains an audible “3–1” immediately after the ayes, but no roll call was taken and no tally was stated, so the division cannot be reliably reported.[3] No separate motion approving the sign permit itself was made; the table's understanding was that the waiver motion carried the approval with it.
Halo-lit (reverse-channel) letters pinned off the wall, glow matched to the two existing signs in the plaza; code permits halo lighting, so no waivers were required. Red is the business's corporate colour. Drawing revised September 1, 2026; one wording change made at the table so the record reads “painting.” Approved as presented, seconded by Eugene Richards[3], no opposition. The board recorded no comments on the application.
No representative appeared. The board noted the application had not been withdrawn and tabled it on a voice vote, seconded by David Vitka[3]. It carries forward to a future agenda.
Both items are printed on the agenda. The Building & Zoning Clerk declined to open a discussion without the rules and regulations document in hand, and the board took nothing up. A reference was made to next month's calendar.
Moved, seconded and carried on a voice vote about 24 minutes after the recording begins.
What aired and what did not. The agenda sets a 6:30 p.m. work session ahead of the 7:00 p.m. regular meeting. The work session is not in the recording, and it is not incidental here: the first applicant opened his remarks by saying he had been sitting in the room listening to the board's sign discussion during it, so the reasoning that shaped the evening's main decision happened partly off the record. The recording itself begins mid-sentence, after the gavel, with a member stating they were chairing in someone's absence — the recording does not establish whose, and the roll shows the full seven-member board present, including the chair. It ends after adjournment on unrelated chatter, which is disregarded.
No roll calls, and one tally this brief will not report. Every item carried on a call for ayes; no roll call was taken on anything. On the 5526 Main waiver the recording contains an audible “3–1” just after the ayes. With all seven members present and no roll call, that cannot be read as a reliable tally — it may be a tally spoken by one member, a question, or a mistranscription — so this brief reports the motion as carried and leaves the division open. The official minutes will settle it.
Corrections. [*] marks a proper noun corrected against the posted agenda, the verified board roster, or the municipal street index, which govern over the audio. The agenda is authoritative on all three business names, and the audio mangled each: Read it & Eat (heard variously as “Read it and eat” and “Read It and Read It”), Millie's Ice Cream (heard “Milly's”), and Empire Mart (heard “Empire Mark”). Member names come from the verified roster, against audio renderings of “Liker,” “Waterman-Colpa,” “Greco” and “Beck.”
Unconfirmed names. [3] marks detail the audio alone supports. Agendas name applications and addresses, not the contractors who present them or the members who speak, so both sign-company representatives and their firms, the neighbouring business whose sign became the standard, the seconders identified here from first names against the roster, the abstaining member, and every unattributed quotation fall in that category. Verify against the official minutes before quoting. The second applicant's street address was rendered unintelligibly and is omitted rather than guessed.
Street validation. Run per this village's standing method — Williamsville has no street file of its own, as the village lies inside the Town of Amherst, so the transcript was checked against the town's street index. Two candidates: Main Street matched exactly, and “Old Forest Street,” part of the second applicant's garbled business address, is not on the index and is almost certainly an out-of-village street; it has not been corrected to resemble one. The three subject addresses were confirmed against the agenda. Addresses were also cross-referenced against this publication's scanner address record; nothing in it bears on any application before the board.
Continuity. The one item carried over from September 8 — the second Steve's Diner sign at 5759 Main — is reported above as unreached, which is what the record shows rather than a conclusion about why.