AAA Vacuum has been at its Lake Highlands location for 20 years now. You’ve seen it — it’s on Walnut Hill just east of Audelia — the freestanding little place with the yellow border around the upper third of the building’s façade with black lettering announcing “RAINBOW”, “ORECK”, “HOOVER” and other brands sold within.
But now, the City of Dallas is telling AAA’s owners that they need to remove that signage, which has marked the shop since its day one.
“The lettering has been there, as is, for 20 years — we have customers come from all over and this is how they know who we are,” says a frustrated Caroline Thomi — she owns the shop along with her son Mark.
The lettering, according to city code enforcers, violates a section of the city code adopted in 2008 that prohibits a certain amount of lettering larger than four inches high in the top two-thirds of a building façade. The written warning that the Thomis received from the City’s Code Enforcement Department was a result of either a random code officer report, or a citizen complaint, says Kelly Gregan, the Lake Highlands community prosecutor who visited the Thomis earlier this afternoon (the Thomis plan to file a public records request to determine who submitted the report/complaint). Gregan says Code Enforcement is required to answer all service requests "across the board".
Gregan says she will arrange for a consultant to meet with the Thomis in order to suggest possible solutions and inform them about what they may and may not do in terms of store signage. This is of little comfort to the AAA owners who are visibly upset by the whole thing.
"We’ve been providing a service to the community for so many years … every small business is struggling these days and this doesn’t make things any easier,” says Caroline. Mark adds, “There are so many other more important issues (in Lake Highlands) that these city workers could be dealing with.”
I plan to stay in touch with the Thomis and keep you posted about happenings at AAA . By the way, while I was there, I ordered a Hoover — I’ll also let you know how that works out, because I know you care.
