The City of Mount Vernon will be hosting a wayfinding signage meeting in April, seeking community input for some of the designs.
Members of the council heard a report from Confluence on the wayfinding study Wednesday, March 23.
Patrick Alvord, principal engineer at Confluence of Cedar Rapids, outlined the goals with the signage.
“One of the goals with the wayfinding signage the city identified was the need to drive folks from the highway into the downtown,” Alvord said.
Confluence identified roughly five different entry points to the City of Mount Vernon where wayfinding signage would be beneficial — The roundabout with Business 30 and Hwy. 1, the roundabout near the Mount Vernon School district, the west entrance to the town near the Mount Vernon Police Department, the entrance to Mount Vernon from Springville Road and the entrance to town from the north along Hwy. 1.
“One of the things we’re looking at is the signs that will help direct people to the on and off ramps for Hwy. 30,” Alvord said.
For Confluence, the goal with any wayfinding signage is to celebrate the past of the community, while complimenting the future. Wayfinding signs would attempt to be as non-invasive as possible, but help to direct people not familiar with the community to the important regions in town, including the uptown business district, Cornell College and Mount Vernon Schools.
“One of the priorities for Mount Vernon is that we want signs that look sharp, but we don’t want any that would take a lot of cleaning or maintenance,” Alvord said. “I look at something like the stone signs in Coralville which are visually striking, but they require a lot of maintenance for those city crews. That’s something we would want to avoid for Mount Vernon, as that would put a burden on a small community’s city crews.”
Alvord said that the wayfinding signage study will have a quick turnaround time, roughly a four months after getting input from the community.
With community input happening in April, Confluence will bring back additional designs in May for the aesthetics, then go back and develop designs and bring the ideas back in July for the city to possibly implement them.
One of the key things for the wayfinding signage will be developing a gateway sign that will be placed in the Business 30 roundabout at the intersection with Hwy. 1.
Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police chief Doug Shannon said that having a visual impairment in the roundabout would actually be beneficial to traffic there.
“Having the center of that roundabout full would actually make people have to slow down,” Shannon said. “Right now, because people can see traffic coming from all directions, most drivers don’t slow down as they enter or traverse the roundabout. By having an obstruction that limits view of traffic, drivers would need to slow down.”
Council member Craig Engel asked if the city could tie into the signage that Cornell has for their property. Alvord said that the only tie in he would recommend would be in directing people to the campus, and letting Cornell’s signage do the rest.
Mayor Tom Wieseler asked about the city’s restrictions for signage.
City administrator Chris Nosbisch said the school, city and college have a little flexibility within those ordinances, and that wayfinding signage is not looking to be large or obtrusive.
“I think the only restrictions I’d see are along Hwy. 1,” Nosbisch said. “All the other roads, we have flexibility on where we can place our signs. Our biggest challenge is in the uptown business district, where we already have several signs about parking and other items.”
The wayfinding signs will try not to direct to an individual business, but more the business district itself.
“The goal is when people leave the bypass, we can direct them to various landmarks in the community,” Nosbisch said.
Alvord said one of the things the city should recognize is that as development happens along the Business 30 corridor, signs at the north and west end of town may need to help direct people to that region as well.
Nosbisch will work with Jennison and members of the Community Development Group to host the wayfinding signage meeting and collect more community input.