Submitted by Suanne Z. Thamm
Reporter – News Analyst
October 1, 2019
At their March 5, 2019 Regular Meeting, the Fernandina Beach City Commission (FBCC) passed Resolution 2019-43 approving Dawson Associates LLC as a sole source vendor to place new wayfinding signage in the downtown area.
Fernandina Beach Main Street paid for the initial design phase with $25K from a grant. The City paid $180K from impact fees. This cost covers not only the street signs and parking lot identifiers, but also table top maps that will be placed in the parking lots to identify business locations.
New street directories will replace the green signs that are suspended from poles at cross street intersections. Those green signs were paid for by merchants, who will not be required to pay for the new signs.
Fernandina Beach Main Street last year obtained the services of Dawson Associates LLC with funding assistance from a state grant to study and recommend themed signage for downtown Fernandina Beach to replace the mishmash of signs that have proliferated over the years. A wide audience of stakeholders participated in the process of coming up with a new design, which was presented to the community last fall. The city and Fernandina Beach Main Street have worked together on this project.
Dawson subcontracted the manufacture of the signs; the graphics were done locally by FastSigns. Jeff Dawson has been working with the installation team to place the first round of new signs.
Sadly, Main Street Executive Director Arlene Filkoff reported that a person or persons have made off with one of the new signs, which cost about $1,200 each. A police report has been filed.
Filkoff said that any regulatory signs not already replaced will remain, but she is working with the City to standardize those signs.
Update: According to Arlene Filkoff, “The signs are purposely intended to be read by pedestrians. It’s best practice to get folks out of their cars and walking around our beautiful city. It’s actually very unsafe to have business names on signs legible from a car.”
The new signs are quite attractive, and definitely enhance the Victorian vibe of downtown. However, while passing one the other evening I heard the folks looking at it complain that there is absolutely no way to see them from the street while driving. As much as I might like to see Centre Street become a pedestrian mall like Las Ramblas in Barcelona,and as in so many other great cities of the world, I don’t see that as a likely outcome, so drivers are left pretty much in the dark.
My own suggestion would be to have the signage show destinations along Centre Street. If you are looking for a destination and arrive from any of the side streets, there’s nothing to tell you which way to go.
I like the appearance of the new signs as well. With the ubiquity of driving navigation applications like Waze I can’t imagine a driver getting misdirected too much since they can start at 8 and count down to 2 or visa-versa. I am curious about the justification of using impact fees for the signs as it was my understanding that impact fees were to be used only for new or expanded features directly related to growth.
Dave I think the impact issue you raise could be an issue.
I agree that the signs are tasteful but very hard to read while driving
The signs are purposely intended to be read by pedestrians. It’s best practice to get folks out of their cars and walking around our beautiful city. It’s actually very unsafe to have business names on signs legible from a car. Please contact [email protected] with any ideas for helping our downtown businesses!!!
It may be best practices, however, drivers need signage too. How will you respond to this need?
Google Maps is the way-finder of choice.