Bank gains new signs, Main St. loses historic clock
First Niagara switching to blue, yellow and silver markers
The Daily Mail
Aug. 4, 2009

A new look will be coming two First Niagara Bank branches in Catskill.

The Lockport, N.Y., company has changed its corporate logo from the familiar blue and white waterfall logo to a blue, white and yellow waterfall design that will soon be appearing on its 113 bank branches.

Last month, Pat Boni, of Saxton Sign Corp., met with the Catskill Village Planning Board to discuss the signs and ask for the board’s permission to erect the signs.

So, later this year, the signage upon which people on Main Street have come to depend for the time and temperature will be replaced.

The new blue, yellow and silver signs will also replace the exiting signs at the bank branch on West Bridge Street.

Boni said the new signs will be roughly the same size as the existing ones, but in some cases lower to the ground or shorter width-wise. For example, an existing 12-foot sign will be replaced with a seven-foot sign. The sign on Main Street will be 14 square feet. Free-standing signs will not be flat but convex, he said.

The lettering of the main signs at the branches will be lit from within, Boni said. Currently, the entire main signs light up.

“Less is going to light up now than is lighting up right now,” he said.

Planning Board Chairman William Zwoboda said he did not like the colors of the new signs and Board Member Michelle Pulver said she would miss having a large clock on Main Street.

Boni said certain signs could not be manufactured in varying sizes in ordering for the lettering and logo to be the correct size. He said the Catskill signs would have to match all First Niagara signs.

“The good news is what we are putting us is a lot smaller than what is there,” he said.

Pulver said she had heard of instances whereupon corporations would work with municipalities to produce signage that fit the needs and approval of the business and of the locality.

“We have tried to maintain a Main Street with historic feel,” she said, adding that she would prefer if the company hung with with three dollar signs on it or a bronze plaque outside the entrance of the Main Street branch.

Pulver cast the lone dissenting vote on both sign resolutions.