ThisWeek CW 05/16/2013
It’s now up to Canal Winchester City Council to choose new signs for the Historic District.
City Development Director Lucas Haire presented the city’s Old Town Committee with three new options May 6 for replacing wooden signs in the Historic District that are in various states of disrepair.
Two of the selections are metal signs and one would be an engraved stone pillar.
“The one option is what they use in Cleveland … basically, it’s a stock street post with a frame that then has a metal sign and vinyl graphics on it,” he said. “The frame is about $2,000 without the finishing graphics, so we’re probably looking at about $2,800 per sign.
“We haven’t gone out for actual quotes yet, though, because we want to finalize what you want before sending out specs.”
Haire said the advantage of the two metal sign options is durability and the ease of replacing the vinyl graphics if necessary.
Committee Chairman Rick Deeds said Canal Winchester City Council would decide on final specs and let the staff know how to proceed with the signs, but he didn’t give a specific time frame for this to occur.
“The good news is all three of the options are appealing,” Deeds said.
Destination: Canal Winchester Executive Director Bruce Jarvis told the committee he’s excited by all the investment that’s been made in the city over the past decade, particularly the impact it has had on the historic district.
“Looking at the hundreds of thousands of dollars invested here by people in their buildings and equipment and everything, that’s what has delivered this vibrant area we have here today,” Jarvis said. “We’re working on putting together a high-quality visitor brochure based on an example we saw from Reynoldsburg, that we are putting a lot of thought into because this is our image, we want to get it right.”
In compiling the new brochure, Jarvis has been soliciting input from city staff members, residents and businesses. He said he hopes that targeted advertising in the brochure will help defer the cost.
He said his conversations have led to the realization that many of the improvements around town have also had the effect of highlighting blights that hadn’t stood out in the past.
Specifically, Jarvis brought up issues of peeling and faded paint and vandalized equipment.
“It’s like if you restore an old car and you put some new chrome bumpers on it. Before you did that, the paint looked all right but now it doesn’t look quite as good. Each things leads you further down this path,” he said. “So things that are not pristine in town maybe have become invisible to us that live here, but as a result of others making improvements, these stand out to visitors, so we’re respectfully asking the city to follow up on some of these things.”