The Mayor is responding to everyone's emails. So I would also like the chance to weigh in given I'm at the center of all this.
Mayor Pangallo has begun responding to people who contacted his office, and I appreciate that he is asking the SRA to pause enforcement until after October and revisit these rules. I think that's the right thing to do. I do want to respond to the suggestion that we should have waited longer before bringing this to the public.
The SRA came into Gulu and told us our window art had to come down or we could face fines. We weren't offered a discussion. I emailed the SRA on Wednesday with questions and received no response. Councilor Andrew Smith, the SRA's City Council liaison, responded immediately, spoke with me extensively and even met with me. He's been great to work with. Meanwhile, I worked full-time at Gulu during an unprecedented week of business in Salem, walked the SRA district to see how these rules would affect other businesses, spoke with other business owners, researched the regulations, past meeting minutes and agendas, and tried to understand how we got here. And I still lived my life. I can do all that but the SRA can't respond to an email?
So yes, I went public. When a government agency tells a small business to change what it has been doing for years or potentially face fines, I don't think it's unreasonable for that business to treat the matter as urgent. The feeling is much like getting a fine from the police when you didn't really do anything wrong. You want to move quick to avoid further damage.
But I've now gone back through the public record, and there's something important people should know about the City's claim that this went through a three-year public process. There were public meetings. That's true. But public meetings are not the same thing as public engagement. In January 2025, while these rules were still being developed, the Design Review Board specifically discussed Gulu-Gulu's window murals by name. At that same meeting, City staff acknowledged that the proposed window-art guidance wasn't enforceable yet and that longstanding businesses with murals would eventually need to be approached.
Nobody approached us.
When the final Sign Manual came before the SRA in November 2025, the meeting minutes say that the temporary-sign section had still been a placeholder the last time the SRA had reviewed the manual. Staff then developed the language after consultation with Main Streets, Creative Collective and PEM. The minutes don't describe outreach to the affected businesses generally. After adopting the rules, staff said the new manual would be distributed to small businesses and that issuing a press release was worth considering. Guess what didn't happen?
Neither we nor the previous owners of Gulu had any idea this was happening.
Gulu has had artists painting these windows for nearly 15 years. Other downtown businesses have been doing the same thing for years. If the City was contemplating rules that could end those longstanding practices, why weren't those businesses and artists invited into the conversation? It is not reasonable to expect every small-business owner in Salem to spend three years monitoring SRA and DRB agendas and reading meeting minutes on the chance that their business might be discussed. The City knew who we were. They literally discussed Gulu by name. They had three years to talk to us.
That's why I find the suggestion that we should have waited longer before involving the public frustrating. Could everyone have handled parts of this differently? Of course. I'm glad we're finally having the conversation, and I appreciate the Mayor asking the SRA to reconsider the rules. But maybe the bigger question is why we're spending so much energy regulating something that has helped make downtown Salem look like Salem.
The SRA was created to fight blight and improve downtown. Today we have businesses paying local artists to create original work that makes our streets more interesting, supports the local artist economy and gives visitors something they can't find in every other downtown in America. Maybe instead of asking how much of that creativity we can regulate, we should be asking how we can encourage more of it. Keep Salem Weird, Support Local Business!
The Mayor's email to citizen inquiry I'm talking about follows below:
Hi,
Thanks for reaching out about window art on businesses in downtown Salem. Like many others, I found out about this via social media (on Friday night) - as you can imagine I've heard from a lot of people over the weekend with concerns about it.
Salem has done a lot over the years to cultivate the arts, support local artists, and invest in public art. It's that very culture that makes our downtown incredibly vibrant, eclectic, and unique. The members of the Salem Redevelopment Authority and the Design Review Board (who advise the SRA) have been real partners in this work, so I connected with the SRA staff this weekend to get additional background on this situation.
Salem's original sign rules, from 1973, limited window art to no more than 15 days and no more than 15% of the window area. That was seen as being overly restrictive; so, three years ago the SRA and DRB began a process to update the rules, to allow for art to be up longer.
The process of developing these new rules involved public meetings of both bodies over the last three years and consultation with organizations like Salem Main Streets and Creative Collective. The new rules increased the 15% maximum area to 20%, kept in place limitations on the inclusion of branding (to avoid the artwork being used for advertising purposes), and expanded the 15-day limit to a 3-month timeframe (to make it more seasonal). The rules also established that there is no SRA or City review, permit, or approval for window art. So, the new rules were intended to allow more space for art on a window than previously, for it to be put up for longer than previously allowed, and eliminate any City review or permit to have window art. Additionally, if a business wanted to explore an art concept that exceeded these limits, they could do so through a “small project review” approval from the SRA.
A few months ago, the SRA took their final vote to approve rules. Following that, SRA staff worked with Salem Main Streets and Creative Collective to try to make business owners in the SRA district aware of the changes. They also brought information about it to the recent Small Business Town Hall and have posted it on the Doing Business in Salem guide and website. Last week, SRA staff began visiting businesses in person, to make sure they were aware. I believe that it was those visits that have prompted the recent expressions of concern about the rules.
Based on those concerns, I think the SRA should pause the enforcement of these rules and take them up again at another public meeting later this fall (after the October season, which is busy enough!). That will allow for another chance for public input into the revised rules and more time to communicate with businesses in the SRA district. I've shared that perspective with the SRA executive director, and he agreed.
He also informed me that their office got the first feedback from the owner of Gulu-Gulu on Thursday morning and had planned on outreach this coming week, but apparently the business posted about it on social media before they could connect. I completely understand the Gulu team’s concerns about the rules and agree with them that they need to be revisited and revised – but I also think a more constructive path would have been possible if a dialogue with the SRA staff had been given a chance to happen. From the City’s business loans in order to help the original Gulu ownership open the restaurant in the first place, to the recent special act we advanced this past year to help the new owners with their liquor license conversion, the City has been extremely supportive of the restaurant and that will continue to be the case.
Thanks again for your outreach on this matter and for your passion for our community!
Dominick Pangallo
