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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Signage study results on tap for council

Everyone can relate to getting lost in a new city: Where’s that park everyone was talking about? Where’s the stadium where the ballgame will be played tonight? And wasn’t there a museum everyone said not to miss?

Signage is key for visitors, and since 2011 Spokane County municipalities and tourist organizations have been working with Pennsylvania-based consulting company Merje on a regional wayfinding and gateway project that seeks to streamline signage.

On Tuesday, the Spokane Valley City Council will look at a list of 35 sign-worthy destinations in the Valley when representatives from Merje present the wayfinding study to the council.

At the top of the list is Avista Stadium, followed by City Hall and the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum, and retail destinations like Auto Row, wineries and Spokane Valley Mall.

Similar lists have been generated for Liberty Lake, West Plains and Spokane as part of a gateway project initiated by Mark Richard, president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, in 2011 when he was a county commissioner.

Richard, who lives in Spokane Valley, said the idea behind the project is to create a specific look of directional signs that still allows for preservation of municipal identity.

“It focused on signs along I-90,” Richard said. “We want to get people off the freeway and into this great city of ours.” Richard said every municipality and countless community organizations were invited to the stakeholder meetings that kicked off the project.

The project is funded by a $242,027 Federal Surface Transportation Program grant.

“To me, the gateway project is a kit of parts,” Richard said. “Each municipality will have to look at the list of signs and make a decision about which priority this has.”

Richard said the Downtown Spokane Partnership will try to secure some grant funding for the Spokane signs, but other cities will have to do their own funding.

Spokane Valley Public Works director Eric Guth said it will be up to the City Council how or if to fund the signs.

Guth explained that the signs are organized in a tier system, with tier one being the most visible and primary traffic destinations, like Avista Stadium; tier two being destinations that still generate a lot of traffic, like trailheads and parks, but not quite as much as tier one locales; and tier three featuring destinations like wineries and shopping malls.

The criteria for each tier were set by the consultants who designed the project.

“That was a way of avoiding a big argument over who gets a sign and who doesn’t,” Guth said.

How to pay for them is another issue.

Cheney mayor Tom Trulove said the wayfinding project focused too much on Eastern Washington University and that declining sales tax revenue and building activity in recent years means that Cheney is struggling to pay for basics such as police and fire protection.

“Nearly everyone has a GPS unit in their car or on their smartphone with the capability to give directions,” Trulove wrote in an email. “It may be time to rethink signs and their purpose.”

Liberty Lake City Administrator Katy Allen said the wayfinding project is a high priority for Liberty Lake.

“It may be easier for us because we only have one freeway exit – not as many as Spokane and Spokane Valley,” Allen said. She added that the task force and the consultants “have done all the hard work” and she hopes Liberty Lake’s City Council will decide to fund the signs.

“We are entering into our budget season, so it’s a good time for the council to look at how and if they want to spend the money,” Allen said.

Cheryl Kilday, president and CEO of Visit Spokane, who’s been involved with the project from the start, said a regional approach to signage is important for a good visitor experience.

Kilday added that it’s possible to find grants that would cover the construction and maintenance of the signs.

“One of the reasons why we picked this consultant is that they have great experience finding funding for these projects,” Kilday said. “We can look at that once we get everybody’s buy-in.”