POULSBO — Greater Poulsbo Chamber of Commerce executive director Stuart Leidner showed the city council’s community services committee a Top-10 list Jan. 10.
The list outlined the first phase of a citywide sign project designed to link all of the city’s business districts and increase awareness of what each offers, Leidner said.
“A lot of different groups had discussed getting new directional signage for the city,” he said.
Those groups met under the auspice of the chamber of commerce and included representatives from the Historic Downtown Poulsbo Association, Viking Avenue, Poulsbo Village, the College Market Place and the business district east of State Route 305, he said.
From that group came the initial list of places where signs should be placed throughout the city, Leidner said.
The chamber is requesting $20,000 from the city’s hotel/motel tax fund reserves to help with the project and businesses will also pay a fee to be listed on the signs, he said.
The total cost for the signs is about $14,000, and the expectation is that the city will install them, Leidner said.
“They will be sold on a first come, first served basis or a lottery,” he said, adding that businesses will also pay a yearly maintenance fee for the signs.
Since inevitably signs will damaged by wind or vehicles or other such incidents, Leidner said the proposal includes about $8,000 for sign replacement and repair.
As Councilman Ed Stern reviewed the proposal, he asked if the sign location numbers reflected their priority.
“The ranking reflects priority signs two through 10,” Leidner responded. “The only thing it doesn’t reflect is are any of the costs for what’s out on the highway. That’s DOT (Washington State Department of Transportation), and we haven’t gotten them to agree to anything.”
Stern said the most important locations for the signs are surrounding the College Market Place.
“It’s important that we take advantage of the College Market Place, because there are people who are going there, who don’t know about the rest of Poulsbo,” he said.
The signs should show motorists the city has at least two complementary shopping districts, which would go a long way toward fulfilling the council’s promise to take care of downtown when it approved the Olhava development, he said.
“Council had committed to use some revenue from whatever place to funnel money from College Market Place back into Poulsbo,” Stern said.
Councilwoman Connie Lord agreed the primary objective for phase one of the signage project should be to bring people from the College Market Place into the other parts of the city.
Currently, it is easy for motorists to drive through the city on Viking Avenue or State Route 305 and miss downtown or other parts of the city, Councilwoman Kimberlee Crowder said.
“I think it’s important just for the fact that a lot of times people don’t realize what we have,” Crowder said.
As for the actual signs themselves, Leidner said they will be made from recycled milk jugs and are relatively low maintenance.
Since the signs have ultraviolet light protection, the only maintenance would be annual cleaning, he said.
