Wayfinding project: New signs to promote Q-C sites

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By Jennifer DeWitt | Saturday, April 21, 2007 | 1 comment(s)

A plan to improve signage across the Quad-Cities may finally be finding its way off the shelf — though it still is expected to be slow going.

Years in the making, the Quad-City Wayfinding Initiative could begin to show signs, literally, of progress as early as later this year. A proposed system of new directional signs — designed to help visitors more easily navigate the bi-state area’s multiple cities, states and scattered attractions — likely will become visible later this year in the Iowa Quad-Cities, where both Davenport and Bettendorf have budgeted initial funding for the project.

But improving the wayfinding system across the entire Quad-Cities is still the goal.

“This is an immense project,” said Joe Taylor, president and chief executive officer of the Quad-City Convention & Visitors Bureau, who has been the project’s biggest cheerleader. “I’m of the opinion we can move forward if we get the original plan off the ground … then we can add, change, delete and expand once we do that.”

The wayfinding proposal dates back to 2001, when the visitors bureau — with assistance from River Action Inc. — secured funding to hire Corbin Design to create a wayfinding plan for the area. Among the ideas was a new graphic to be used on all directional signs divided into quadrants to represent the Quad-Cities’ topography. Corbin also proposed a color code system to help people know when they are entering or leaving a community. The system would help unite the Quad-City attractions and destinations as well as help visitors and newcomers alike better understand the lay of the land.

The wayfinding plan developed by the Traverse City, Mich.-based Corbin Design also identified locations for 217 signs that promote 85 Quad-City destinations.

Taylor said there is no magic to the number of signs or the places selected, but it’s a starting point. Once the signs finally begin to appear, he knows others will say “my attraction wants to be part of it. My community wants to be part of it. My neighborhood district wants to be part of it.”

While efforts have continued behind the scenes, the plan is likely to take shape in a piecemeal fashion. But the first signs should first appear in Davenport and Bettendorf, which both budgeted money in their capital improvement funds for fiscal 2008. Davenport has budgeted $100,000; Bettendorf, $50,000.

“What’s happening now is the devil in the details,” said Denise Bulat, the executive director of the Bi-State Regional Commission, which is helping to coordinate the project from a transportation perspective. She said work is under way to look at what sites to create signs for first, where exactly to place the signs, what type signs and posts to use and who should produce the signs.

“We’ll likely see Iowa will proceed with this initially, and Illinois will proceed after that,” she said. In addition to the cities’ funding, she said the Iowa Department of Transportation, or DOT, is expected to assist financially to some degree — as it did in Clinton and Dubuque, where wayfinding systems already are in place.

While the Illinois DOT is supportive of the plan, Bulat said it has not funded such programs in the past. In fact, Bulat said Bi-State is seeking possible grants to assist the Illinois cities in moving forward. “It’s going to be an incremental process. It’s not going to happen overnight,” she said.

Becky Douthitt, the project manager with Corbin Design, said it is difficult to predict a reasonable timeline for any of these projects. This one brings additional challenges because of the coordination necessary between five-plus cities, two DOTs and dozens of attractions and destinations.

“I’m not surprised at all where we’re at after starting in 2001. It’s exciting we are nearing implementation …,” she said.

Douthitt said it can take years for a community to put wayfinding plans into place and they often are phased in, as this one will be.

“Obviously, the system works better as a whole,” Taylor said, predicting that the Quad-City system will be completed city by city.

Although Corbin originally estimated the cost between $400,000 and $600,000 for full implementation of the system, Douthitt said the costs could decrease depending on what elements the cities can take care of — such as using existing posts, doing work in-house, or fabricating the signs themselves or other vendors.

Davenport public works director Dee Bruemmer said the city is in the process of identifying where to locate its first round of new signs and has not determined how far $100,000 will go toward rolling out the project. She said it depends on “how many current posts, new posts are needed and how many the state will pay for on the primary roads.”

Decker Ploehn, Bettendorf’s city administrator, said the two cities are coordinating efforts as they plan for signage, particularly along the Interstate 74 corridor “where people exiting on 53rd, Spruce Hills or Kimberly Road can go to either city. We want to create a system for visitors to be able to maneuver without looking at a lot of maps and having to figure it out.”

As part of the first phase, Douthitt said Corbin Design analyzed how the Quad-Cities is arranged to develop its proposed graphic and plotted the attractions on a map to come up with a recommendation of where signage is needed. The company also reviewed various Web sites of area attractions to see how they direct people to their destination in order to have the proposed signs match up with directions being given.

The renewed interest in the wayfinding project is encouraging to Taylor, who has been relentless in his promotion of the idea among city governments and other leadership organizations. “In 2001, wayfinding was viewed as frosting on the cake — fine if you had it but OK if you didn’t,” he said. “Back then it was seen as a ‘tourism’ thing, but now it’s viewed as a vital component of transportation.”

Jennifer DeWitt can be contacted at (563) 383-2318 or jdewitt@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at www.qctimes.com.