New Amityville Stop & Shop logo approved

Stop & Shop officials were "delighted" Thursday now that Amityville's planning board has approved a design makeover for the supermarket chain's Merrick Road store, a company spokeswoman said.

The design change will prominently display the company's new multicolored fruit-bowl logo but not a purple stripe that would have lined the storefront, as proposed last month, the planning board determined Wednesday.

The purple, green, red and yellow of the proposed signs ran afoul of an Amityville ordinance prescribing only certain "historical" colors for commercial signs.

Board members were willing to let that slide last month but objected to the broad purple stripe on the store at 351 Merrick Rd., and Amityville Mayor Peter Imbert said elements of the design didn't match the village's Victorian, nautical look.

Stop & Shop spokeswoman Arlene Putterman said the company -- which is several years into a nationwide rebranding effort -- had not run into objection over its colors elsewhere. "We've never had another problem anywhere else," she said Thursday.

Planning board president Jerry Pollack said after Wednesday's meeting that both the company and the village had gotten what they wanted with the new design.

"They adjusted a little bit and I think got pretty much what they wanted, but we got what we were looking for also," Pollack said.

The new design maintains the phrases "low prices" and "great food" in illuminated lettering above the store entrance, though board members had asked about removing them at last month's meeting.

Putterman said she did not know when the storefront makeover would take place.