By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — A new downtown restaurant was served up approval by the Architectural Review Board and Historic District Commission on Tuesday — at least for its bright red awnings and its sign.

The Original Pancake House, a West Coast chain, plans to open its Westport location at 35/43 Main St. in the space previously occupied by Boca restaurant. The first Original Pancake House opened in Portland, Ore., in 1953 and the chain now has 129 locations across the U.S., plus additional eateries in Asia, according to the business’s website.  

The Westport restaurant would be the chain’s first in Connecticut. The closest of its existing outlets include one in White Plains, N.Y., and two in New Jersey.

The Westport restaurant is located on Parker Harding Plaza, behind Main Street, with its entrance off the pedestrian tunnel between Main Street and plaza’s parking lot. The other tenant in the building is West Elm, a furniture and home décor store, which fronts on Main Street.

At a Tuesday night joint meeting of the boards, members reviewed a sign for the restaurant and its plan for awnings, presented by architect Frederick Hoag. 

Though at first the members balked at the hot-red color of the awnings, they approved the two architectural features unanimously after Hoag said both elements are part of the restaurant’s national branding.

“Remarkably” hard to locate ramp for disabled

 A search for solutions about where to place a ramp for the disabled at the site of the former Remarkable Book Shop building, 177 Main St., ended without a new plan at Tuesday’s meeting.

The two panels approved the planned renovations anyway.

The ramp, planned to comply with requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act, under the proposal would be set at the corner of Main Street and the entrance road to Parker Harding Plaza. 

The location of the long ramp with metal hand rails is unsightly and detracts from the historical features of the building, the two commissions said at an earlier meeting Nov. 1, and repeated at Tuesday’s meeting.

The building, now owned by Rhonda Eleish and Edith Van Breems, will be the new home of the antique furniture store Eleish Van Breems Home, which is moving there from Franklin Street in Saugatuck, keeping the Saugatuck location as a trade show room.

Commission members, and the project architect Patricia Gill, debated other possible locations for the ramp on the property, including in the front, raised courtyard of the building, where the business owners plan to erect a gate to keep skateboarders out.

The courtyard and gate are not consistent with other buildings along Main Street, while locating the ramp near the parking lot entrance would not be attractive and could pose safety problems, ARB member Vesna Herman said.

The courtyard “is not the same as other stores on Main Street,” where customers enter directly into a building from the sidewalks, she said. Stepping up and into a courtyard could also deter shoppers, she said.

Moving the ramp to several other locations in and outside of the courtyard also was discussed. But after no solution was found that left enough space to accommodate both the ramp and other pedestrians, Herman suggested voting on the plan with the ramp located as originally presented.

“None of us gave any option” that could work, she said. “We cannot redesign the whole job right now.” 

The commissioners backed the site plan unanimously, with the ramp at the corner, and referred it to the Planning and Zoning Commission.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and currently teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.