Downtown group discusses wayfinding

Despite the wishes of some Downtown Improvement District board members, there might not be a gateway sign arching over Main Street near U.S. 41 anytime soon.

Still, the DID and city staff are working together to determine what is appropriate to help people navigate to and around the downtown area.

At Tuesday’s DID meeting, the group discussed a variety of possibilities for adding wayfinding to the heart of the city.

For more than a year, the DID board has pursued the possibility of installing gateway signs at key entrances to the downtown core. The group had narrowed its focus to the Main Street and U.S. 41 area, which it identified as a primary entrance point to the west end of Main Street.

But at Tuesday’s DID meeting, city staff highlighted some possible shortcomings of the gateway sign plan. The DID’s goal was to attract the eye of people driving along U.S. 41, encouraging them to come downtown. Susan Dodd, the city’s economic development manager, said it would be difficult to actually position the sign in a place where it was visible to drivers as they approached.

She said that would become even more challenging if the city builds a roundabout at the U.S. 41-Main Street intersection, as it plans to do.

“Going southbound, you may not be seeing it at all,” Dodd said. “Going north, you’d be seeing it just before you’d need to turn.”

Staff delivered some good news for the DID, though. Chief Planner Steve Stancel said the city has $300,000 in its budget for wayfinding improvements and encouraged the DID to explore its options for using a portion of that money.

Dodd said the DID didn’t have to abandon the concept of installing a placemaking sign near U.S. 41 and Main Street. She suggested something at a pedestrian scale — including signage she described as “required arrival photography” for visitors — could help raise awareness of downtown.

Expanding beyond the initial gateway sign discussion, DID board member Wayne Ruben seized on the possibility of adding directional signs within the downtown area. He pointed to the planned addition of at least six downtown hotels as an incentive for investing in signs that would steer people toward shopping and dining districts and cultural institutions.

“Our pedestrian traffic will greatly increase,” Ruben said.

As the group discussed its options, DID Chairman Ron Soto was reluctant to abandon the gateway sign concept. He wanted to focus on a sign that would draw people into the downtown area, not just guide them around upon arrival.

“There’s nothing that says, ‘Hey, there’s the welcoming sign — that’s the way to go,’ ” Soto said.

Soto pointed to similar entry markers in the Burns Court and Rosemary District areas, but Dodd suggested those, too, were not necessarily effective.

“I don’t think they get the visibility they want,” Dodd said.

The board agreed to revisit the conversation with additional information from staff at its next meeting.

Because downtown stakeholders have been discussing improved wayfinding for more than a decade with no results, the DID expressed some skepticism about a project eventually coming together. Still, the group is determined to push forward.

“It always comes to nothing,” DID board member Eileen Hampshire said. “It’d be really nice to make a bit of an effort and get somewhere.”