Siesta Isles Association scopes out new signage

Siesta Isles Association thinks the community’s tan-and-turquoise entrance signs need a makeover. The main sign on Shadow Lawn Drive is at least 50 years old, and the five signs at the various entrances into the community aren’t consistent.

“(The signs) look dated; the paint is fading,” said Tony Romanus, president of Siesta Isles Association. “We have to agree what we want this to look like.”

There are also discrepancies with the material used and the amount of landscaping at each sign. The Beach Way Drive location doesn’t have the infrastructure to match the other signs because it doesn’t have electricity for illumination or irrigation for the landscaping.

Bringing the Beach Way Drive sign into compliance could easily cost $5,000 on its own, Romanus said.

Stacey Roberts, a board member who helped gather information on the signage, suggested the board think about native plants as part of the landscaping and also consider vamping up the landscaping at the intersection of Shadow Lawn Drive and Midnight Pass Road.

“That’s the beginning of our major entrance,” she said.

The board pitched the sign idea during its annual membership meeting in October and tried to gauge interest among other association members. Some members wanted the board to think bigger — not to just improve the sign but the entrances as a whole to help Siesta Isles stand out.

The organization is hoping to have a grant proposal completed in time to apply for Sarasota County’s neighborhood grant program in the spring. Before applying, the committee will have to figure construction and volunteer-hour estimates. It also has to explain the project’s public benefit, safety improvement and community strengthening.

“We’ve already got some people interested to help,” Roberts said. “That’s important.”

If selected for the grant, the county will match what the association budgets and give credit for volunteer work, too. The association is budgeting $4,000 for the signs and is aiming for about $1,000 worth of volunteer hours — meaning the county would give it an additional $5,000 for the project. The county would credit volunteer hours at $15 per hour.

“This is our biggest expenditure in a long time,” Romanus said.

For now, the sign committee’s next step is to establish cost estimates for replacing the current landscaping and updating the Beach Way Drive infrastructure for electricity and irrigation. The committee hopes to present those numbers to the board at the December meeting.

“This will be a multiyear, multiphase project,” Romanus said.

Hannah Bridgham
Although the Siesta Isles Association hasn’t made any decisions on the future image of the community’s entryways, the organization has hired an intern to design a new logo for its future signs.

Hannah Bridgham is a sophomore Ringling College of Art and Design transfer student from Kennebunk, Maine. She started off studying environmental studies, but it didn’t feel right. She is now majoring in motion design.

“I was drawing in my free time, and I thought, ‘Why am I not doing that?’” she said.

Bridgham’s dream is to work in sports graphics — her father played baseball in college.

Bridgham has experience in coastal designing — her mother is an interior designer with her own shop in Maine. In 2011, Bridgham began repurposing sea rocks and driftwood into signs and decorations, painting sea life or scenes onto them and selling them to her mother’s clients. She’s even reached a celebrity status — Barbara Bush is one of her clients.

This will be Bridgham’s first big project she’s sought out on her own, she said. For now, she’s focused on helping Siesta Isles narrow down what it wants.

“I’m really excited about it,” she said.