STARKVILLE — When Ewaldson Francois and his wife Martisa repainted Empowerment Station Academy on Whitfield Street in June 2022, their goal was to bring fun, bright colors to the day care both inside and out.
“We were trying to make it lively for the kids,” Francois told The Dispatch Friday. “More color.”
The pair painted the building’s exterior walls yellow and green, adding purple for the awning and bright blue doors, modeling it after another child care center Francois owns in Monroe County. While Francois initially heard no complaints about either location, he said, about a year later, they received a letter saying the colors were against Starkville’s Unified Development Code.
That letter sparked a months-long process of applying for a special exception to the code, which among other things governs facade colors for commercial structures. Francois came before the board of aldermen first on Jan. 16, then again Tuesday night, asking to keep some combination of his bright colors.
Instead, the board approved an exception for the purple awning and blue doors, but ordered the exterior walls changed to a neutral color.
The board also recommended that Francois meet with City Planner Daniel Havelin or Assistant City Planner Lyle MeCaskey to make sure the neutral color falls under city codes, providing him with the approved color palette for Main Street as an example of these colors.
Up to code
The city’s Unified Development Code, passed in 2019 and enforced starting in 2020, includes a section requiring commercial buildings’ facade colors to be “low reflectance, subtle, neutral or earth tones.” It also prohibits the use of “high intensity, metallic flake or fluorescent colors.”
MeCaskey told The Dispatch on Thursday this code only applies in areas designated for commercial development or multi-family dwellings.
The rule does not apply to zones for single-family dwellings.
“Every time we have new developers come to town, they build a Walmart or a loan facility, anything, we have requirements that they have to try to match the existing character of that area,” MeCaskey said.
Mayor Lynn Spruill told The Dispatch on Thursday the facade standards in the city came about due to a bright pink structure at the corner of Louisville Street and Highway 12 becoming “an eyesore.”
Since the facade regulations took hold, the board of aldermen had heard and approved only two other special exception requests to the code, Spruill said, including the magenta-colored awning over the T-Mobile on Highway 12 and the orange-colored awning over Ulta at Triangle Crossing.
“It doesn’t take up the whole building. It’s just an accent piece,” Spruill said. “And there’s a difference between being an accent and being a slap in the face.”
The code, she said, maintains city standards and prevents businesses from competing with each other to be the brightest.
“If we have some sort of standards, then you don’t find people trying to do one-upmanship, and you don’t end up with some sort of kaleidoscope of bizarre coloration that is a distraction to the attractive nature of your community,” Spruill said.
MeCaskey told The Dispatch that no applicant, to his knowledge, has been permitted an exception to keep their entire building decorated with multi-colored, high reflectant colors.
Day care future
Francois said he and his wife intend to comply with the boards’ decision. He said he was initially angry to have to change his building, but the facade code “makes sense” to him. Still, context matters.
“I don’t disagree with it,” Francois said. “But I feel that common sense is important. If I had a different kind of business – if I had a massage business, and I painted it that color, it wouldn’t make sense.”
Still, Francois said, he wishes the whole process had gone faster, or that he had been presented with an acceptable color palette at the first meeting where he presented his case in January. That way, he could have complied with the code without coming back before the board to clarify which colors were acceptable.
In the end, the day care will still have its blue doors and purple awning, which helped ease the blow slightly. Still, Francois said, he is going to have to spend more money on paint.
“We’re just going to probably paint it tan,” Francois said.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 38 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
